South African Water Polo has asked World Aquatics to hand it the day-to-day running of the sport, filing a formal application on 7 October with the federation’s legal and governance office in Lausanne, Switzerland, seeking control of national team selection and operations for a transitional period while Swimming South Africa keeps its formal membership. The request rests on Article 5.5 of the World Aquatics Constitution, which allows the Bureau to decide what rights a national body that is not a member may have where more than one body governs aquatic disciplines in a country. Article 5.2 says only one body per country can be a member.
The application is the product of a delivery failure stretching across nearly two years of court action and negotiations with SSA, which runs all aquatic disciplines, including swimming, artistic swimming and diving, under a single umbrella. SAWP grew out of a movement that began in late 2024 and was registered in February 2025 as a water polo-specific alternative. Its founders were coaches, referees, administrators and players who had lost faith in SSA’s running of the sport, with the last straw for many being SSA’s decision not to send the men’s and women’s teams to the Paris Olympics despite their qualifying.
SAWP chief executive Robbie Taylor said the application and a cover letter reached Lausanne on 7 October, and in a WhatsApp message to Daily Maverick on 14 October said an official from World Aquatics had verbally acknowledged receipt. The operational rights SAWP wants are extensive: running national leagues and tournaments, operating its own national selection panels, delivering high-performance coaching, liaising directly with World Aquatics and Africa Aquatics, and guaranteed access for eligible players to international and Olympic qualifying competitions. Taylor argues the case on delivery grounds alone. “SSA does not operate domestic water polo leagues, we do,” he said. SAWP says it has given World Aquatics the undertakings its constitution requires, including compliance with the anti-doping code, though Taylor said it was still “in discussions” to implement an anti-doping programme and would comply fully once recognised.
The urgency, Taylor said, comes from the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic qualification cycle, with World Cup competition due to start in December for women and in January for men. “SAWP could not stand by and allow another generation of South African water polo players to lose their international and Olympic opportunities due to domestic administrative delay,” he said. Crucially, SAWP is not seeking to replace SSA as the country’s member of World Aquatics. It wants to run the sport for two years while SSA keeps the membership and the formal right to enter teams in international competitions.
What broke the negotiations, according to a log of communications SAWP supplied to Daily Maverick, was selection. The log, which SAWP acknowledges is its own version of events, records 34 messages and attempts at contact over 291 days, beginning with a draft memorandum of understanding sent to then SSA president Alan Fritz on 23 December 2025. The two bodies did not meet until 28 May 2026, after which SSA said they were exploring a “single integrated water polo formation” within the federation. No contact is recorded between mid-May and late August, when Fritz and CEO Shaun Adriaanse were provisionally suspended by World Aquatics’ integrity unit. Acting SSA president Zikie Molusi then proposed signing a memorandum within 10 days, by 25 September, but that date passed without a meeting. On 5 October, SAWP told Sascoc that SSA had shown no genuine intent to make progress; two days later it applied to World Aquatics. On 9 October it sought clarification of an SSA counter-proposal memorandum, concerned it would leave SAWP with no say over international programmes and selection, and a day later formally rejected it, saying it bore no resemblance to earlier discussions and stripped SAWP of its mandate. The log does not make clear whether SAWP had the counter-proposal before applying to World Aquatics.
Sascoc, which SAWP copied on its application, confirmed the formal position. “The recognised body for aquatics in South Africa is Swimming South Africa (SSA), as recognised by World Aquatics,” a spokesperson said in an emailed reply, adding that only SSA can nominate athletes to represent South Africa, and that Sascoc cannot dictate selection processes to any federation. “Should SSA agree with SAWP that they will recognise the proposed pathway for qualification, Sascoc will follow the guidance from SSA.” SSA did not respond to questions from Daily Maverick.
SAWP’s case received a significant judicial boost in June 2025, when Western Cape high court Judge Judith Cloete dismissed SSA’s urgent application for an interdict with costs, finding that SSA “does not have an exclusive right in perpetuity to govern or administer the sport of water polo in South Africa”, and that only World Aquatics could decide whether to admit another body. SAWP rejects the label “breakaway”, though it was formed outside SSA’s structures.
Taylor, in a statement to SAWP’s members, said the organisation had requested an urgent interim determination under Article 5.5, a mechanism he said allows World Aquatics to formally recognise SAWP as the national governing body during a transitional period. In follow-up answers, he conceded that “interim determination” was the organisation’s own label, describing a reviewable, 24-month transitional arrangement, since the article itself makes no provision for one. He also conceded that the 20,000 school athletes SAWP cites, through its partner the Schools Waterpolo Association of South Africa, were hard to verify, calling the figure the schools association executive’s “best educated guess”. Fritz told Parliament in April 2025 that SSA had never had more than 130 water polo players registered; SAWP claims 2,052 registered active competitive players of its own.
There is precedent for independent water polo bodies: in the United States, USA Water Polo governs the sport under a single umbrella member of World Aquatics, and World Aquatics expelled Mexico’s swimming federation in 2024 and recognised a new body in 2025. But Daily Maverick could find no case of it granting a non-member operational control while the incumbent remained a member. Whether it will do so now is the question sitting in Lausanne, as reported at https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-10-14-sa-body-goes-to-world-aquatics-for-right-to-govern-water-polo/.