The head of South African Swimming, Gideon Sam, is under fire by South Africa's national Sport and Recreation Committee. Chairman Butana Komphela contends that Sam has been eluding them since early this year and is on the virge of being served with an arrest warrant for 'contempt of Parliament'.

Komphela wants South African Swimming to explain why, 10 years after the end of apartheid, there are relatively few black swimmers competing at the elite level in South Africa.

Though South Africa is 95 percent black, its international and Olympic stars have all been white. Only one club, the Vineyard Swimming Club of Western Province, have been able to produce black swimming champions. In 2000, Raazik Nordien became the first black male to win a national title when he took the 200m butterfly at the Telkom Short Course Championships. Teammate Ziada Jardine was able to do the same for black females, winning the 200m breaststroke title at the same meet.

In ten years of freedom from apartheid, this is all South African Swimming has been able to produce, which Komphela states is "unacceptable". "Swimming cannot just be a monopoly of the few and continue to say that black people can't swim. They must tell us what they are doing to develop them." he added.