With less than a week to go before a sports amendment bill is put to the vote in the national assembly, a senior MP is continuing to lobby the department of home affairs to penalise teams who are unrepresentative.
The chairperson of the portfolio sports committee, Butana Komphela (ANC), came under fire in April when he suggested national teams be barred from leaving the country if they were not representative.
He said on Wednesday that his committee continued to lobby home affairs for support for this proposal. But the department has said such meddling would be unconstitutional as every South African is entitled to a passport.
Deputy Sports Minister Gert Oosthuizen said on Wednesday that it was impossible to legislate punitive action such as that favoured by Komphela.
The National Sport and Recreation Amendment Bill, to be debated on Wednesday, would give the sports minister greater power to intervene in disputes and fast-track transformation in all national codes.
It would also allow the minister to intervene in any dispute "likely to bring a sport? into disrepute", or in "non-compliance with guidelines or policy" on the promotion of equity, representivity and redress.
The amendments would require sport federations to submit membership figures to Sport and Recreation South Africa.
Oosthuizen said, however, that this was would be purely to enable the government to provide assistance when asked by a federation to do so.
"I don't see anything dangerous about this bill. The federations (would continue to be) independent," he said.
The bill would, however, allow the state to direct Sport and Recreation South Africa to refrain from funding federations that failed to comply with the decisions of mediators or directives from the minister.
The DA has said it is "seriously concerned" about the proposed amendments and has expressed its opposition to them.
"Sports people should be allowed to run sport," said Donald Lee, DA MP responsible for sport oversight.
The DA was worried about every aspect of the minister's right to intervene in the running of sport.
"The minister's responsibility should lie with providing development funding and ensuring schools have sufficient sport facilities."
Bonginkosi Dhlamini, of the IFP, said his party supported the bill and was concerned about the slow pace of change. "We need the minister to intervene in transformation issues and to ensure equal access as demanded by the Constitution."