WATCH | Hack says new board must improve the image of Saids

South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport (Saids) chair Raymond Hack says the newly appointed board will need to put in much time and effort to educate people about Saids.

The board, appointed by sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie in January, comprises Hack, doctors Lervasen Pillay and Wergely McKenzie, lawyer Corrine Berg, Sharief Hendricks (senior exercise science specialist at UCT), Keletso Totlhanyo (head of SABC sport), Nomcebo Dlamini (central drug authority) and Shantha Balakrishna (advocate).

In an exclusive interview with Sowetan, Hack said: “We’ve got to get the image out there. There is a gentleman called Graham Abrahams who used to be on the Saids board and is at SuperSport.

“He [used] a phrase; he said, ‘You need to make Saids sexy.’

“People take notice of what it is, and it is not meant in a sexist way; it is meant to put it out there,” the former chair of the Caf disciplinary committee said.

“You have influencers; we need to have ambassadors; we need to have role models.

“If I go ask somebody such as Lucas Radebe or Welcome Ncita [former world boxing champ], people the youngsters look up to in their sport, whenever they speak, I want them to speak about doping and not taking stuff that will enhance your performance,” the founding member of Golden Gloves, Africa’s premier boxing company, said.

One goal was to have a number of ambassadors in various sporting codes.

“You take a person such as Caster Semenya, or any of the guys who were in the 4x100m [relay], the swimmers, the athletes, or the netball players, because every sport is subject to Saids interrogation,” he said.

“So we need not just one person, but you’ve got to look at what is the most popular sport.

“At the moment you’ve got football, rugby and athletics basically, but it doesn’t mean you’ve got to leave out tennis and netball and stuff like that.

“But you need to get into the schools. The challenge we have, I think, is that a lot of the private schools are a bit reluctant because if you look at the top rugby teams, the U-19 teams, there’s always a suspicion that some people are there.

“And if, obviously, someone tests positive, then it’s a reflection badly on the particular school.

“So not looking at that aspect at this stage, but rather going from [grade 8], when they are 14 or 15; that’s the age group going all the way up.

“But we’ve gone to the schools.”

Asked what needs to happen for Saids to make an appearance and conduct its duties in boxing tournaments, he said: “Saids is always there; you just don’t see them. We tested in the boxing that has just happened at Emperors Palace.

“Boxing will write to us and say we have a tournament on such and such day; it’s a world-class whatever tournament it is. We would then send two doping control officers; they will go and identify which boxers to take.

“We would just pick, the same as in football. Nobody knows who we are going to test.

“Obviously if there is a world record or a world championship boxing bout, the winner is automatically tested.

“For example, in swimming and athletics, you test the winner, the first three and one out of the 10; we do target testing; we do out-of-competition testing and we do in-competition testing.”

Hack explained what target testing is. “The hotline, someone phones and says, ‘Listen, I believe Bongani [just a random name] is maybe doing something’; they wait and see what he enters into and do it.

“If it’s in competition, you are part of the elite pool. Once you are part of that pool, you can be tested anytime, anywhere; you have to provide your information as to, they call it, your whereabouts information, as to where you are going to be; the doping control officers will go there.

“They will identify themselves and say they’ve come to do an out-of-competition testing, and they will test.”

Hack, who was previously South African Football Association CEO and a Fifa disciplinary committee member, added: “The problem we have at the moment is, unfortunately, we don’t have a laboratory in South Africa anymore.

“We used to have the Bloemfontein laboratory, but that was closed down. Wada [World Anti-Doping Agency] closed it down because it was non-compliant.

“The current minister [McKenzie] has given us permission to speak to the University of Witwatersrand to try to see if they are able to assist in this way, and they are currently in negotiations with Wada to see if they can get the accreditation.

“Because it saves us sending the samples out of the country to be tested and athletes need to know quickly whether they are or aren’t [positive].”

Hack insisted professional athletes know what Saids is.

“Whether in cricket, rugby, or soccer, they know they can’t take drugs,” he said.

“For us it’s the education of the children; the only way we can do it is with the assistance of the schools, explaining what drugs are and explaining how bad they are.

“SABC has a great programme, and SuperSport M-Net has got school sport through Curro Schools, and we are looking at all the schools, government and private schools, to try to get involved.

“Have roadshows; we do the Comrades Marathon, and we do the cycle races and all the top events.

“That’s not what our aim is; our aim is to get to younger people and also to educate the parents.”

Hack said that was because no sportsperson will put up their hands and say they want to take drugs.

“The parents will say you need to be aggressive on the rugby field or you need to do this, or the coach will say if you take this, you will be faster, so we need to change that perception.

“The more we can get our message across, the stronger we are; you know, we’ve got to do a certain amount of tests per annum in terms of the World Anti-Doping Agency, but it’s not just in competition; it’s [also] out-of-competition.”

But that requires funding. “We need to make the profile of Saids a lot bigger because it’s gone down in the past eight to 12 years,” said the founder member of Saids who was appointed by then-sport minister Steve Tshwete in 1997.

That was the year Saids was established by an Act of Parliament.

Sowetan