With regard to Ian Jayes’ article dated 30-8-11, I completely agree with every word in his article.
For those that are ill informed like Mr. Du Plessis, herewith the history of being forced to hand over our Gauteng horse racing to a BEE compliant public company:
1. We were paying a 9% turnover tax + VAT before we had serious competition from other forms of gambling
2. The casinos paid far less tax than us, so when we could not cope anymore, the National Party Gambling Board agreed to form the HRDF, in order to provide finance for capital projects.
3. When the local casinos were opened, we could not cope with the ridiculous 9% turn over tax, so we approached Jabu Moleketi and Andrew Feinstein.
4. Mr. Moleketi informed us that he would reduce the tax to 3% + VAT, if we went public with a 35% BEE participation.
5. A 6 member steering committee was formed in order to establish the Gauteng Racing Association with me as chairman.
.
In order for racing to survive we came to the following recommendations:
– Stakes to be increased for 1998 by 25%
– 0.1% of T/O for running expenses
– 3.4% of T/O for stakes
– 100% of bookmakers contribution
– 50% of Sponsors income
– 16.95% of other forms of income
– Nomination fees
We anticipated a surplus of R10m for the first year, this would be put into a trust account and would be used to smooth out unexpected drops in income in the short term.
We also expected for the year 1999 a drop in T/O of 10%, although we agreed that stakes had to increase by minimum of 10% p.a., thus the trust fund would come to the rescue.
It was also agreed that it was essential that the stakes for a maiden win would have to be progressively increased to a year’s keep of a horse in training.
What has happened is the opposite, some Turffontein maiden races now pay R25000 after deductions, while a year’s keep is around R100000.
The HRDF grant of R17m for the building of stables and groom quarters at Newmarket, as agreed by the Gambling board of which I was a member, disappeared somehow into the coffers of Mphumelela, as a capital injection and a small portion was used to build the inferior stables at Turffontein, the balance helped the Phumelelela executive to increase the share price of the public company, and of course make their executives’ options more valuable.
This is a great point of contention that the Phumelela executives try and boost the share price with increased profits, but who looks after the wellbeing of the goose that is laying the golden egg for them?
Another bad decision was the sale of Newmarket, the powers that be were of the opinion that Gauteng racing could be best served with the Vaal tracks and the Turffontein tracks and transferring the lights from Newmarket to Turffontein, however what did not enter their minds, was looking at the logistics of that decision, it takes a person from the northern suburbs up to two hours to get to Turffontein at that time of the day, while Newmarket was within a 45 minutes reach, thus night racing at Turffontein is a total flop, while Newmarket could have been used to entice young people to come to the races.
There is another question that needs an answer, what happened to the light towers, the lights, the cabling, the generators and the considerable amount of art works from Newmarket ? As well as why did Phumelela accept a tender for the lighting at Turffontein that was more than R10m more than competing tenders?
– from Joe van Streepen
.
To paraphrase the popular song – by Ian Jayes
PHUMELELA responds to Ian Jayes
Where is Julius Malema when horse racing needs him? – by Ian Jayes
