Sports governance: Private or public?

This column this week is a sequel to last week’s piece prompted largely by Fufa president Moses Magogo’s Twitter comments on the said article.

He commented that sports has a dual reporting mechanism; where money comes from government, it should be accounted for as taxpayers’ money and when it comes to what he termed as “internal Association decision making, it must be made by members or their international affiliates” meaning that monies from elsewhere for example from Fifa have different accountability channels.

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Magogo also added that “interference only begins when external stakeholders, for example the government start to take decisions reserved for association members.”

From Magogo’s intervention, he uses adjectives like “members”, “internal”, and “external” in reference to who stakeholders are in sports or better still, who has a say as far as sports is concerned. It clearly shows us that there seems to be an exclusive group of persons who determine what happens with sports.

Sports ability to invoke unbridled emotion among people is perhaps only matched by religion. It no longer stands at the periphery of our existence but is now a part of the socio-cultural fabric of society.

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Yet, Sport has over the years operated a private law legal regime parallel to the legal systems of nation states for example Fufa that runs “organised football” in Uganda is governed by Fifa Statutes as opposed to the 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Uganda. At least on paper.

But with the enhanced monetisation and economic-social-cultural significance of sports, nation states have refused to simply look away-many a time called upon to help by the same sports administrators who claim autonomy or their citizens who are obsessed with the hedonism that comes with sport.

As a result, the formal regulatory structures of the state have come in; from domestic legislation, to scrutiny by the courts of law that shied away before and more budgetary allocations.

Yes, Uganda does not have a comprehensive sports legislation yet, but has, though archaic, the National Council of Sports Act and the more recent, National Council of Sports Regulations of 2014. The latter is particularly pertinent to my argument in today’s piece because it mandates that all sports associations be incorporated under the Laws of Uganda.

I am aware that almost all of them are incorporated as Trusts as of today. The Trustees of these sports associations run their respective sports in trust and on behalf of Ugandans, no?

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The thorny and controversial subject of whether national courts have jurisdiction over these sports matters is still a matter of debate but as far as judicial review is concerned, there seems to be consensus that when the courts are approached through this route, then they are clothed with the jurisdiction as was seen in Proline vs. Fufa and others.

The lines have gotten blurred over the years because sports bodies are private bodies with a public character because they exercise functions that are public in nature. The other reason being the nationalistic sentiments around sports.

The “autonomy” principle of sports, noble as it was in its inception has since been abused over the years by sports administrators in order to shield corruption and as a consequence, there is growing consensus among sports scholars that when it comes to issues involving criminality, the principle can be legally breached a’ la Sepp Blatter and Platini.

Magogo contends that it was wrong for the Kenyan government to institute a caretaker committee to run football in Kenya in the aftermath of Nick Mwendwa’s arrest (interestingly, he was arrested again this week after charges had been dropped), valid as that argument might be, unfortunately, it looks like that is going to become the norm as countries adopt local legal regimes to govern sports. The price that has to be paid for increased government sports funding.

Sports is simply too important for governments to entirely leave it to sports “internal stakeholders.”

The author is a Sports Lawyer and Lecturer | [email protected]