The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) may be headed for a collision course with the Minister of Sport Tokozile Xasa due to differences in certain constitutional issues.

Sascoc on Saturday insisted that they do not object to the Minister’s recommendations contained in a report produced from the ministerial inquiry into the affairs of the organisation‚ but that they want further engagement on certain constitutional issues because some of the items are sacrosanct to them.

On Friday‚ Xasa gave the current Sascoc board until the end of April next year to implement the wide-ranging recommendations of the report at the organisation‚ which has been riddled with issues of poor governance.

Reacting to the report‚ the contents of which Xasa disclosed in a press conference on Friday‚ at Sascoc’s general meeting in Johannesburg on Saturday morning‚ president Gideon Sam said they want to further engage Xasa on issues around how the future presidents of the organisation are going to be appointed.

The report recommended a future presidents must be independent‚ appointed by an independent committee and have no affiliation to any sport and recreation body‚ in contradiction to Sascoc’s view that he or she must be elected by the general assembly.

“We have to sit down and say are we going to agree or not on the issue of how a president must be elected‚” Sam said.

“We will engage the minister and the person she is going to appoint to oversee the process. If you are talking about an electoral college we agree.

“All names of those who want to stand as president of Sascoc must go to the electoral college. How we put an electoral college is something that we can all work on.

“Once the names are there and they have all been vetted‚ our view is that it will be the prerogative of the general assembly to say that is our president.”

The other issue Sascoc want to discuss further with Xasa is how they are going to get around the recommendation that senior officials such as the CEO‚ CFO‚ COO and director of communications must relinquish their membership or affiliation to sport structures.

The report recommended that Sascoc must relinquish membership and affiliation from sport and recreation bodies to avoid issues of conflicts and commissions that have plagued the organisation and align with good governance.

“The second one is the issue of when you get elected to the board of Sascoc‚ whether you should really stand out from all duties as club members or president in your federation‚” Sam said.

“We believe that you are only in the sports movement because you are a member of a sports structure and that is sacrosanct as far as we are concerned.”