Parliament has given Boxing South Africa (BSA) 14 days to identify officials linked to irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure and provide deadlines for consequence management.
The ultimatum came after Boxing SA admitted that no officials had yet faced consequence management, despite more than a year having passed since Parliament called for a forensic investigation into the regulator.
Boxing SA CEO Tsholofelo Lejaka admitted this to Parliament’s portfolio committee on sport, arts and culture on Tuesday.
“In terms of implementation of the actual consequence management, as the AG also indicated, we haven’t started with the consequence management on that,” he said.
The Auditor-General found that no disciplinary steps had been taken against officials responsible for irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, despite the requirements of section 51 of the Public Finance Management Act.
Lejaka said some of the irregular expenditure dated back more than 15 years.
“There’s irregular expenditure that dates back to as far back as around 2010. If you look at what the AG said, he said that there’s R15 million irregular expenditure. That irregular expenditure was never investigated. So that is historical,” he said.
Lejaka said Boxing SA had completed the first phase of its investigation, identifying the transactions and the people responsible.
“We now have got an action plan that says for this transaction, it is this person. For that transaction, it is that person,” he said.
But when pressed on whether action had been taken, he admitted it had not.
“Have we started implementing consequence management on that? Not in all transactions. I think that is the humble and honest answer. In the next appearance that we have, hold us accountable if we have not started to take actions against all other individuals that are still within the employ and are behind those transactions. That is my plea to you,” he said.
ANC MP Matsholo Mmolotsane reminded Boxing SA that the committee had called for a forensic investigation when the regulator last appeared before it on 22 April 2025.
“It’s more than a year where we expected that by this time we were supposed to have received the report, according to the recommendation that we took in our previous portfolio committee. Unfortunately, we have not received anything. Is Boxing SA taking this portfolio seriously? Because really, I am not happy,” Mmolotsane said.
Mmolotsane said the people responsible should be named.
“Sometimes this thing of not naming and shaming the people makes work very difficult, because the same person will be in this department, and then tomorrow he or she will be in that department,” she said.
Lejaka said DSAC had appointed the investigators because Boxing SA could not afford the investigation.
The work started in August last year.
But Lejaka said the draft report raised more questions than it answered.
“There were a couple of issues where the draft report showed that they were a bit shallow. I think it had to do with the scope of their own appointment,” he said.
He said the investigators had to be persuaded to continue with the work.
“It had to take a lot of persuasion for them to continue with the work,” he said.
The final report is now expected by the end of October, after which it will go to the minister and then to the committee.
DA MP Leah Potgieter questioned why increased board activity had not resulted in consequence management.
Board committee meetings almost doubled from 33 to 65 in 2025/26, while committee fees rose to about R1.42 million.
“Why did that level of governance activity, almost double, not produce any consequence management?” Potgieter asked.
Lejaka said the board had inherited “an organisation that was in distress, a sector that was in disarray”.
He said many of the additional meetings were needed to establish and induct new committees.
Boxing SA chief internal auditor Nyiko Mabunda told the committee that no new irregular expenditure was identified in 2025/26.
The R1.3 million reported in the latest annual report related to 2024/25, he said.
In August 2024, the committee called for a forensic investigation into Boxing SA’s affairs.
A day later, McKenzie dissolved the regulator’s board.