A decade of talk, five years of building and nothing to show for it as Franschhoek High School, where Swimming SA’s High Performance Centre was to have been built, is a decaying wasteland. The establishment of a Franschhoek High Performance Centre has been in the pipeline for close to a decade under Swimming South Africa (SSA). Yet there is nothing to show for it but a few derelict buildings and weeds.
Now SSA will face the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to explain where more than R50-million in funds have disappeared to. The project has been brought to a halt with corroding half-built infrastructure outlining what was intended to be built. Faeces-covered bathrooms, vandalised walls, broken gates, swimming pools holding shallow puddles of sewage water, shattered windows and patchy knee-high grass form what is supposed to be the Franschhoek High Performance Centre.
This is all on the property of Franschhoek High School, one of the oldest government schools in the country. SSA received funding from World Aquatics (around R8.5-million), the National Lotteries Commission (about R35-million) and The Sports Trust (about R6-million) to finance the project. The total cost of the project was set to be R111-million, with further private investment also supporting the project.
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Once the Franschhoek High Performance Centre was up and running – which a section of it was, for a short period in 2023 – it aimed to be self-sustaining. The income was to have come from star international junior athletes who would have receivedscholarships from World Aquatics. They would have occupied refurbished hostels at Franschhoek High School and been educated at the school, in a language of their choosing and in a curriculum they preferred.
The Franschhoek High Performance Centre would have been a hotbed for talented swimmers, at the time one of only four High Performance Centres worldwide accredited by World Aquatics. Other centres have since been approved. The project, as initially laid out by sports development programme Train Camp, was perhaps too ambitious.
The High Performance Centre was to be SSA’s national training base, while also housing SSA’s high school development programme, which aims to accelerate transformation in swimming. Graham Hill, who was the South African national swimming coach for more than a decade and a former coach of Chad le Clos, was attached to the programme.
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