Minister Gayton McKenzie reveals latest on Boxing SA Acting CEO

McKenzie recently dissolved the BSA board, led by Sifiso Shongwe, after just three months in office, citing escalating legal costs in a court case against the National Professional Boxing Promoters Association (NPBPA) as one of the reasons. 

Now, with no board and no CEO or Accounting Authority, the sport has been in a state of paralysis, but McKenzie says they are addressing the matter.

"When you fix this functionality – you can't say there's dysfunction now, it was dysfunctional, so it can't be more dysfunctional than what it was," defended McKenzie.

"We are in the process of fixing. Tomorrow we are appointing an acting CEO, which by law becomes the [association's] accounting authority."

With only a week left before the 21-day period, the Portfolio Committee of Sports, Arts, and Culture had asked McKenzie to return to Parliament and present the way forward about the boxing crisis. 

READ: Parliamentary Committee calls for arrests on missing BSA funds

The political firebrand has once again revealed he would be opening criminal charges against members of the BSA board, whose term finished in December 2023, for the financial irregularities highlighted by the Auditor General.

"I will be opening criminal cases against the previous people that used to be in charge of boxing – we will be going out very soon, with an advert to get a new board," he added.

"You can't be a functional entity, and you pay boxers R4 000 to risk brain injury – it can't be! I'm fixing stuff, boxing will be fixed – Peter "Terror" Mathebula earned R100 000, now you want people, 30 years later, to earn R4 000? No, no, no.

"These individuals that think they're bigger than boxing have found their match in me. No one is bigger, including [Gayton] McKenzie, than the sport of boxing – [just like] no one is bigger than the sport of soccer. The sports are bigger than all of us."