The most uncomfortable question emerging from Parliament’s scrutiny of South Africa’s World Cup delegation may have little to do with the 47 “lucky fans” or the 10 wild cards.
It concerns the journalists who were asked to help decide who benefited while some of them were themselves beneficiaries of government-funded World Cup travel.
That is the conflict-of-interest question that emerged during Tuesday’s Portfolio Committee on Sport, Arts and Culture hearing.
And the Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie, did not dispute that some journalists who adjudicated the department’s Lucky Fans competition also travelled to the World Cup.
Instead, he explained why he believed there was no conflict.
His explanation, however, leaves a bigger governance question unanswered.
The same people on both sides of the process
McKenzie told MPs that the journalists in question had not been given World Cup travel because they were adjudicators.
They were already part of the department’s travelling press contingent, he said.
The department then asked those who were available to assist with adjudicating the Lucky Fans competition.
In McKenzie’s words:
“They were already part of the journalists that would go, and we asked them, ‘Would you adjudicate for us?’”
Some declined because of other professional commitments.
“And the ones that was available, we said, ‘Can you adjudicate for us?’ Thank you,” he said.
On the face of it, that explanation appears to settle the matter.
It does not.
Because it raises a more fundamental question, why was the pool of people travelling with the department also being used to administer a competition determining who else would receive benefits from that programme?
If the journalists were selected to travel first and then recruited as adjudicators, people who had already received a benefit from the department were helping determine who else would receive one.
If they were selected from an established pool of journalists considered suitable to travel with the department and then asked to adjudicate, the same circle was still being used for both functions.
The issue is therefore not necessarily whether anyone acted improperly.
The issue is whether the department built sufficient separation into the process to prevent or at least independently manage the perception and risk of a conflict.
The parliamentary exchange did not establish that it did.
‘If there’s a conflict of interest…’
The Portfolio Committee put the concern directly to McKenzie.
What had the department done to guard against a journalist who wanted to travel to the World Cup being placed in a position where they could influence who else qualified for benefits?
McKenzie’s response was that professionals were expected to declare conflicts.
“Ordinarily, how it works when it comes with any professional person, you have to mention if you are conflicted.”
That sounds reasonable. But it shifts the burden almost entirely onto the individual.
A robust conflict of interest system normally does more than tell people to declare conflicts.
It establishes the rules before the decision is made, requires declarations to be recorded, determines who assesses those declarations, provides for recusal where necessary and ensures that the final decision is made independently.
The crucial question, therefore, is not simply whether a journalist could have declared a conflict.
It is whether the department had a system to identify, document and manage the conflict before it became a problem.
That answer was not clearly provided to Parliament.
You cannot make the beneficiary the gatekeeper. There is a simple principle at stake.
You should not rely on the beneficiary of a decision to police the decision-making process.
A journalist who stands to receive a funded World Cup trip is not necessarily compromised.
But neither should the system depend on that journalist being the person who decides whether their own circumstances create a conflict.
That is precisely why independent safeguards exist.
The Committee’s questioning went straight to this point, what did the department itself do?
McKenzie did not point to an independent screening mechanism.
Instead, he returned to the professional expectation that individuals should disclose conflicts.
That may be an ethical expectation. It is not necessarily an institutional safeguard.
Then there is the bigger journalism question, it is a second issue lurking behind the adjudication controversy.
Even if a journalist never sat on the Lucky Fans panel, what happens to editorial independence when that journalist accepts funded international travel from the very government department whose programme they are covering?
This is a separate issue from the adjudication question.
Sponsored trips and government-funded press travel are not inherently improper. But they create an unavoidable ethical tension.
A journalist who accepts a benefit from a source institution must still be able to report critically on that institution.
The public must also be able to trust that this remains the case.
The adjudication issue is therefore about who gets to decide who benefits.
The journalism issue is about whether accepting the benefit creates a perception of indebtedness or compromised independence.
They are related, but they should not be confused.
The minister’s own defence raises another question
The controversy becomes more significant when viewed alongside McKenzie’s broader explanation of how the delegation was assembled.
On the selection of other participants, including podcasters, the minister repeatedly referred to discretion and the department’s database.
Asked about podcasters Lucian Godfrey and Izaiah Carelse, McKenzie said:
“Izaiah runs a very successful podcast. Very successful. He’s got numbers. And the same with Lucian. They both run very successful, independent of the department, very well known.”
But when MPs pressed him on the criteria used to make such selections, the absence of a clearly articulated, publicly testable framework became increasingly apparent.
McKenzie defended the department’s discretion.
But discretion becomes difficult to scrutinise when outsiders cannot see the criteria against which it was exercised.
And that is precisely why the committee asked for the underlying records.
The records now matter more than the assurances.
Parliament has not established that the journalists involved acted improperly. Nor has it established that the department deliberately engineered a conflict.
What Parliament has established is something more modest and potentially more important.
There are unanswered questions about the architecture of the selection process.
The department should now be able to show:
• the written criteria used to select Lucky Fans.
• the criteria used to select journalists, influencers and podcasters.
• the names and role of the Lucky Fans adjudicators.
• the names of the journalists and other media participants who received funded travel.
• any overlap between the two groups.
• conflict of interest declarations submitted by adjudicators.
• records showing who reviewed those declarations.
• the minutes of meetings where selections were discussed and approved;
• the policy governing the exercise of departmental discretion. and
• the sponsorship agreements governing the World Cup programme.
One question is particularly important,
Did any journalist who adjudicated the Lucky Fans competition personally receive a benefit through the competition or another World Cup selection mechanism?
If the answer is yes, the conflict question becomes considerably more serious.
If the answer is no, that does not make the governance question disappear but it materially changes it.
That is why the records are essential.
The distinction between ‘no conflict’ and ‘no evidence of conflict’
There is an important distinction that should not be lost in the noise.
Saying “there was no conflict of interest” is a conclusion.
Showing that “the process contained safeguards that identified and managed potential conflicts” is evidence.
The latter is what Parliament should be demanding.
Because the integrity of a public selection process cannot rest solely on whether the people involved say they were acting properly.
It has to be capable of being independently reconstructed from the paperwork.
Who selected whom?
Why?
According to what criteria?
Who approved it?
Who declared an interest?
Who checked?
Who recused themselves?
And who made the final decision?
If those questions cannot be answered from contemporaneous records, then the problem is bigger than one journalist, one podcaster or one wild card.
It is a systems problem.
McKenzie has made no secret of the fact that he used his discretion.
He has defended that discretion as necessary to give new artists opportunities, broaden participation and prevent the same people from repeatedly benefiting from government programmes.
There may be merit in that objective.
But good intentions do not eliminate the need for transparent processes.
In fact, discretion makes documentation more, not less, important.
The more discretion a public official exercises, the more important it becomes that there is a clear record showing how that discretion was applied.
Otherwise, the public is left with a list of winners and an explanation from the person who made the decisions but no independent way of testing whether the rules were applied fairly.
That is the uncomfortable question now hanging over South Africa’s World Cup delegation.
Not whether every journalist who travelled was compromised.
Not whether every wild card was undeserving.
Not even whether the minister had the power to exercise discretion.
The question is whether the department can prove, through its own records, that the system was sufficiently transparent and independent to ensure that those receiving the benefits were not also positioned to influence who else received them.
Until those records are produced, that question remains open.
