South Africa’s hockey teams will travel to Belgium and the Netherlands fully funded for the 2026 Hockey World Cup after the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture approved R3-million in financial assistance on 23 July. The intervention came only after public outcry over athletes being forced to cover their own participation costs, raising pointed questions about whether the country’s limited sporting resources are being deployed strategically.
The approval followed a social media post on 17 July by two-time Olympian Onthatile Zulu, who detailed the personal financial burden of representing South Africa. To participate in the World Cup, running from 15 to 30 August, Zulu said she had to pay approximately R68,000 for flights, accommodation, meals, transport, medical treatment and training camps. She described years of relying on family, friends and personal sponsors to fund her hockey career, calling the situation exhausting and stressful.
“I’ve been quiet for too long,” Zulu wrote. “But as we prepare for the World Cup, I feel I owe it to my team, my family and every young athlete in South Africa to speak up. For years, my family, friends and personal sponsors have financially carried my hockey career. While I am deeply grateful when our federation is able to subsidise our costs, the remaining burden on us as players is overwhelming.”
Minister Gayton McKenzie acknowledged the problem when approving the funding. “It cannot be right that athletes who have earned that place on the world stage through years of sacrifice are then asked to fund their own participation,” he said. “Representing your country is a national honour and a national responsibility. It should never be a personal financial burden.”
The circumstances that prompted the intervention expose a deeper tension in how South Africa allocates its sporting budget. Zulu’s post emerged amid public scrutiny of the department’s spending of close to R31-million on activities around the 2026 FIFA World Cup. That breakdown included nearly R8-million on a 14-member delegation, more than R3-million on suite tickets, and almost R7-million for a Bafana Bafana 2010 legends’ exhibition match against Mexican legends on the eve of the tournament. The department also spent more than R3-million on match tickets for the delegation, stakeholders and programme participants, which included fans, influencers and artists.
“What’s even more disheartening is seeing the massive amount of money spent on sports tourism while our national women’s team is struggling to cover expenses to represent our country at the upcoming World Cup,” Zulu said. “It hurts. It really just comes down to care and investment and the necessary people actually paying attention to sports that need development.”
McKenzie defended the World Cup expenditure as falling within the department’s mandate. “Spending a departmental budget on the department’s mandate is not, in itself, a wrongdoing,” he said. “The FIFA World Cup was the single largest global sport, arts and culture platform of the year, and it comes only every four years. No sporting event globally compares to the FIFA World Cup in terms of impact, not even an Olympic Games.”
The question of value for money remains pressing at a time when many communities lack basic sporting facilities and national teams continue to face funding constraints. The Department of Sports, Arts and Culture operates with a total budget of R6.3-billion for the 2025/26 financial year, of which Programme 2 (Recreation Development and Sport Promotion) received R1.281-billion, the department’s lowest-funded programme.
The spending pattern extends beyond the World Cup allocation. Last year, the department spent R85-million on licence fees for the LIV Golf tournament at Steyn City in March. The sports, arts and culture portfolio committee criticised the department for diverting resources away from pre-approved mandates and shifting funds to unplanned projects without sufficient justification.
“The ad hoc implementation of projects such as the provision of wheelchairs for the national basketball team, the LIV golf tournament, and the VAR initiative points to a departure from systematic and strategic planning,” the committee stated in its budget vote report. “Such unplanned interventions risk undermining fiscal discipline and has resulted in the diversion of resources away from core, pre-approved mandates and long-term strategic objectives.”
Meanwhile, the funding challenge extends across multiple sporting federations. The South African Hockey Association received R4.4-million in government funding for 2025/26 while generating almost R29-million in revenue, yet the federation must split costs across international and intercontinental tours, athlete preparation, coaching, management support and team apparel. Funding therefore varies by event. According to the association’s 2025 annual report, the women’s Nations Cup in Poland in June was fully funded, the men’s Junior Africa Cup in Namibia last April was self-funded, and the men’s Junior Hockey World Cup in Chile in December was partially funded.
Swimming South Africa presents a comparable operational challenge. For the Junior Artistic Swimming Championships in August, athletes were initially expected to pay R85,000 per person. When several players dropped out, that figure jumped to R120,000 per athlete. Over the past four years, athlete contributions toward Swimming South Africa have risen sharply. In 2025, the federation spent R15.44-million on high performance. Of that amount, R5.91-million came from the federation and its funding partners (including government and private sponsors), while athletes themselves contributed R9.53-million. That represents a surge from R7.13-million in athlete contributions in 2024, even as overall high-performance expenditure declined from R19.36-million in 2024, an Olympic year, to R15.44-million in 2025.
Governance failures have further complicated the resource allocation picture. The stalled Franschhoek High-Performance Centre project, which received R35-million in National Lotteries Commission funding, has produced only empty pools and dilapidated buildings. A special tribunal found in May that a R24.98-million National Lotteries Commission grant, approved in July 2016 nominally to fund nationwide Olympic awareness events, had been obtained through material misrepresentation and fraud. While those millions were being diverted, South Africa’s Olympic athletes were being told to book their own flights to Rio for the Olympic Games.
The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee, whose mandate is to support Team SA athletes, was accused by a respected judge of being complicit in siphoning funds intended to support those same athletes. Sascoc’s direct liability was assessed as a R150,000 administrative fee, which the organisation says it has since repaid.
The hockey teams will now travel to Belgium and the Netherlands with full government backing. Whether the R3-million intervention marks a genuine shift in how the department prioritises athlete welfare, or simply a reactive fix prompted by public pressure, is a question that the next funding cycle will answer.