To whom it may concern
15 October 2022
RE: SA Vets I SA Junior and Senior Championships 2022

This letter serves to confirm we would like to put forward a complaint against the current executive committee of the South African Table Tennis Board (referred to as SATTB).

In particular we would like to complain against the parties responsible for the poor management and execution of the most important table tennis event on the SATTB calendar, the National Championships.

Secondly we would like to institute remedial action. Perhaps use the Cape Town Open as the event to resume Nationals?

Finally, we would like to propose a vote of no confidence against the executive team of the SATTB.

To kick off we would like to outline a few issues that led to the spectacular failure of the National Championships.

1.     The lack of Communication for tournament dates and venues changed a few times. This caused uncertainty and difficulty for the affiliates, players and parents to properly plan their trip. The affiliates, having to plan for transport, accommodation and food proved to be a nightmare. The lack of communication and confirmation of a venue and dates made it difficult to plan around this uncertainty. For the parents and volunteers having to plan their leave it was also a problem.

2.     The entry fees was another point of contention. Events cost as much as R400 per person per event. After numerous protests it was discounted slightly. Bear in mind there was no confirmation of what the prize money amount would be. For a senior player it would cost as much as R1100 to play in 4 events.

3.     For players and coaches in particular it made it difficult to plan their training schedules for the ideal time to peak. There's only this one event for the athletes to be at their absolute best to make a national team.

4.     They allowed people to participate even though they had not paid their entry fees. The rules outlined in the prospectus as a condition of entry was not observed.

5.     Late entries, poor administration from the office and not adhering to deadlines resulted in the downfall of the event before it even began.

To give you an idea, on 18 July 2022 a prospectus was circulated identifying a date for 1-8 October 2022 but not confirming a venue, a referee, and a tournament director.

Then a few weeks later, approximately 5 weeks prior to the event on 22 August 2022 another circular came out saying that the SA VETS would take place 2-4 October (originally booked for a different date and venue after Nationals). The Nationals would change to 4-8 October.

At the start of the event a meeting was held with respective team managers and a few of the SATTB executives. In this meeting the SATTB exec informed affiliates that they will not be allowed to play without making good on their outstanding payments. Even though this threat was made they still allowed non paying affiliates to participate, whilst the prospectus clearly outlined that they would not be allowed to participate. This shows a blatant disregard for the rules of the competition and the fact that they allowed the culprits to continue shows a blatant disregard to fellow affiliate members who comply with the rules.

During the Veterans tournament there was a dispute that held up play for 6 hours. The tournament referee and competition manager on duty did not resolve this dispute timeously. The action or inaction caused the already tight schedule to take further strain. The tournament referee wanted the complaint in writing before they resolved it. This was a poor judgement call and a poor display of skills and leadership needed to run the event effectively. The rules are clear and should be observed which could have resulted in a decision being taken within 30 minutes tops!

To further demonstrate the teams incompetence, on day one of the event the tournament referee was not present. They also wanted to have an opening ceremony before play started so they kept all the tables open waiting for the Veterans to finish, mind you they only needed 6 tables of the 20 that were on offer (24 tables stated as the plan to host the event). The ceremony never happened and neither did the first day of play for the team events. This caused a major knock on effect.

By Wednesday evening the competition was behind an entire day and a half. Some affiliates with technical expertise approached Joe Carrim (President) to inform him that the tournament would not finish if we continued in this fashion. They presented solutions and offered their assistance to bring the tournament back up to schedule. Joe said he discussed this with Genevieve Lentz (Vice President Technical) and they decided that they do not need the assistance and that the tournament will finish as intended. Further demonstrations and evidence to the lack of leadership qualities such as foresight and identifying problems and solving them.

A decision by the Technical team, led by Genevieve and supported by Joe and Thabang (Vice President Competitions) was taken to cancel doubles and mixed doubles. They also decided to reduce the match format from best of 5 to best of 3 games. Further more they decided to start earlier and end later on the remaining days. It seemed plausible. However it was not adhered to. For example they announced play would start at 8am on the remaining days, however the technical team was nowhere to be seen and only started arriving around 9am. The tournament would subsequently only start around 9h30/10am. We would still see tables empty for hours on end. Once more showing no regard for peoples time, effort and money spent on this event.

It would seem that the tournament management team did not only have a lack of control over their time keeping but more importantly over their umpires - who would go AWOL for hours on end! When the umpires would return, they were intoxicated and stinking of alcohol and cannabis. One such example was during the u15 boys semi final match when the umpire on duty was visibly intoxicated. A complaint was made to the control table, who responded that they wanted the complaint in an email. This was minutes before the start of the match. As usual the tournament referee didn't bother to come attend to a complaint thus nothing was done and the umpire would go on to officiate the match.

There were no practice tables at the event. Often players would hijack tables that were standing empty for hours whilst waiting for the next matches/events to be called on. Officials would repeatedly chase players off the tables but not have matches called. We learned that the reason for the empty tables was due to insufficient support and experience on how to capture score cards and work on the operating system designed to run the tournament. What was even more concerning was that the referee, Moegamad Isaacs was seen trying to capture results Of the score sheets. This points out his inability to delegate correctly as well as the lack of competent members to perform the required duties for the smooth running of the tournament.

Typically the flow of the tournament would look like this:
There would be group stages to determine the seeds for the main draw > the main draw would be done based on the results > a new set of matches would be called > the score sheets would be printed > the result captured in the data sheet > new set of matches would be populated based on the results > new score sheet then gets printed for the next round.

On a few occasions matches were incorrectly captured which resulted in events being replayed or pulled back. One such occasion was in the girls singles u15 quarters. They had to replay previous rounds due to incorrect captures.
At any event, more importantly at a major event the draw should be visible for all to see. At this event however, this basic rule was not observed. A lot of time could have been saved by this one simple rule.Added to this there was not sufficient stationary to ensure the smooth running of the event. There were often delays in printing score sheets or capturing information.

At around 6pm on Saturday (3 hours after the scheduled completion of the tournament), One of the players went to Thabang (tournament manager) to ask if they were going to finish the men's singles event? The player was sent to Genevieve who informed the player "they would try their best finish". The player questioned the urgency to get matches out because the tables were vacant for hours at this point. Genevieve said she lacked umpires, when the player suggested they could umpire their own matches, she said they don't have score cards, when the player suggested they can give in the results after the completion of the match she said that they need to "do it properly so they have proper records". Just another example where people have shown to bring solutions but no urgency or interest was shown to accommodate their ideas. Once more the inability to be agile shows further flaws in the current leadership of the SATTB.

Around 6 hours later at 12h30am on the 9th of October 2022. They finally called the National Championships off! Thus cementing the affiliates earlier prediction that the tournament would not finish.

As remediation for the dismal failure of this event we would like to request the following actions:

1.     That SATTB resumes/completes the unfinished events on their dime by paying for the players transport and accommodation.

2.     If the SATTB cannot do the above then they would have to refund all the entry fees for the incomplete events as well as transport and accommodation to the athletes who were scheduled to play in the incomplete events.
To outline point number 2 as an example, the men's singles event was not completed. It was scheduled to be played on Friday 7 th and Saturday 8th. We request that entry fees, accommodation and transport for those two days be refunded.

3.     In a 6 min recording being circulated where Joe Carrim explains how “disappointed" he is and how he says that "if he must go then he will do so". We would like him to show true leadership and call on him to put his words to action. We also want to extend the courtesy to his fellow executive team. Collectively they have failed in their various portfolios.

The people who are most responsible for this spectacular failure should make good on President Joe Carrim's words "if I need to get out then I will".
An interim solution to this would mean SATTB can handover operations to an interim team that can be led by SASCOC until we can find suitable replacements.
Attached the prospectus for the events and the voice recording.

Kind regards,
Disgruntled members of the table tennis community.
Please take note that by signing this letter you are in support of the motions outlined herein.