21 April 2021, Pretoria – Over the past couple of days, Netball South Africa has noted with great disappointment the allegations of an alleged sex pest that is working within our structures as reported by the Sunday Times newspaper this past weekend.
The article published on Sunday with the title “Outcry as sex pest allowed to stay as netball coach” speaks about a coach who is allegedly accused of sexually abusing players that he coached.
As Netball South Africa we take these allegations very seriously as we believe that we need to protect all our players, administrators, umpires and all our stakeholders against any form of abuse more especially sexual abuse.
As the biggest female federation, we have always ensured that we take all the necessary measures and protect everyone at all times. Such above mentioned allegations are of a serious nature and we have therefore started with our own internal investigations so that we can get to the bottom of this matter to ensure that we do the right thing and get the facts right before we say and do anything.
“Sexual misconduct is a serious offence in any sphere of our society more so within the federation as a large number of our registered members are females; we will therefore leave no stone unturned; we will make sure that we decisively deal with this and whoever found guilty will have to face the full might of the law.
Considering the sensitive nature of these allegations, we want to make sure that we are thorough in our investigations, we will need a bit of time to make sure that we do what is right,” said Nompumelelo Javu, Acting President of Netball South Africa.
According to our internal interactions, we have established the allegations happened before both Molokwane and Javu were part of the Executive that is currently in office, however this does not mean that we will not get to the bottom of this matter and attempt to fix it. We are working around the clock in ensuring that this matter is dealt with and resolved as quickly as possible.
The federation would also like to make mention of the fact that the “two netball insiders” who spoke to the Sunday Times journalist did not have the endorsement of the Executive to do so and as a result, their views and understanding of what Ms Molokwane said were taken out of context and completely misunderstood, all she did was to explain to the Executive on the process that is undertaken when a man impregnates a woman he is not married to. She did not say that it is acceptable in the African customs for an older man to sleep with young girls and pay damages.
There are a few issues we need to interrogate as well because the article did mention that there was a psychologist report that was compiled in 2013 that the publication has in its possession, to this dates Netball South Africa’s Executive has not seen that report, and it is deeply concerning to know that this report has been given to other people outside of netball structures and not to the people that needed to see it. Therefore, it will be difficult to make comments on that until the federation has seen it.
Legal counsel is currently being sought on the issue of dealing with the alleged coach and once that is cleared, action will be taken as advised by the legal teams.
Netball South Africa kindly requests time to investigate this matter, after which the federation will be better placed to respond. We would appreciate a period of 21 days to conduct internal processes and will update afterwards.
