Canoeing South Africa's difeerent types of membership

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Breaking Down Barriers to Entry

As I have mentioned on a number of occasions in the past, CSA, your unions, and your clubs are run by yourselves. They are not government appointed agencies who toss down legislation on a whim or a prayer. Society all over the world tends towards adopting structure and rules that govern our behaviour. Our paddling community is no different.

Over the years, the paddlers before us have formed clubs, unions and a federation. Each having its own set of rules. Periodically, there is a changing of the guard, and rules get amended by a majority vote.

One of the rules that has been handed down is the one pertaining to membership. The CSA and union constitutions state that anyone wishing to take part in an event needs to be registered with a club, union, and the federation. Depending which province you reside in, the costs involved in this registration can be viewed as a barrier to entry into the sport, especially if you only wish to try

the sport out, or if you only wish to paddle socially.

Through your club and union chairmen, CSA have arrived at a solution that they are going to give a bash. I have published this in the past couple of weekly newsletters. Excerpts of which are reflected below:

The First One:

Many paddlers, who don’t wish to race an entire season, find the annual subscription fee (CSA and union) to be excessive. They either choose to sneak into races unregistered, giving the organisers headaches, or they don themselves in a lot of lycra and ridiculous looking sunglasses and climb onto a bicycle seat that looks like it was designed by a pervert.

The CSA and union fee (approximately the price of a dinner with the family or a round of golf) is often viewed as a “barrier to entry”. (Even for some who have daughters who ride horses).

The CSA board, in its immense wisdom, made a decision a year or

so ago, to introduce the category of “social member”.

This membership category costs the princely sum of one hundred SA ront. It officially registers you with CSA and allows you to enter club time trials, minor flatwater races, and inshore surfski races (once you have completed the respective proficiency test).

It does not allow you to enter any major races, provincial championships, river races, or open ocean races.

So, paddlers wishing to enter the short inshore surfski series races such as the Marine Series, the Seadog series, the wall and back series, etc, plus some of the flatwater races (like the Vaalies do around all sorts of ponds), can do so with no guilt by parting with one small buffalo.

The organisers of races who allow unregistered paddlers to participate in their races are putting themselves under massive exposure with regards to public liability. They are also compromising our delicate

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relationship with SAMSA.

Those paddlers wishing to register themselves under this category, who then decide to become full members (because their mate convinces them to do the Fish or Berg), will then need to register themselves as full members (and kiss their Buffalo goodbye).

An indication of why Gauteng is the economic hub of the country is the fact that in a single club alone in that province, there are over 400 registered social members. In the Western Cape - zero.

We have even gone one step further. We have introduced an “event license” for major races.

Many paddlers complain that it is unfair that are obliged to pay an entire years’ worth of registrations when they only ever do one race a year. Whether it be the Drak, the Fish, the Umko, etc. They threaten to invoke the “lycra clause”.

To combat this exodus, CSA has introduced an “event license”.

The way it works is this. If you have been a fully registered paddler before, you can elect to race one major race per year without having to pay a CSA or union registration fee. You will, however, be charged a fee equal to 50% of the race entry (over and above the actual race entry). Also, if you have utilised your one “event license” and you then decide to do another major race, you will need to pay a full membership, and kiss your 50% goodbye.

Life is full of choices.

These dispensations (social and day license) have nothing to do with club fees. Your club fees should be aligned with value received in the form of facilities and cold beers.

We, as a federation are trying to grow the sport and encourage participation. We have to do this within the parameters that are dictated to us by outside agencies like SAMSA, SASCOC, SRSA, SAPS, Events act, ex-wives, etc.

Many of the rules that we have had to introduce are not put there out of our own free will but because we have to comply with certain conditions.

The CSA rules that are in place have not been handed down to us by Pontius Pilate. They have been formulated, over the years, by paddlers such as yourselves. If you do not like them, make an effort to have them changed (or just opt for the lycra).

The Second One:

Jeez!!!!!!! My short bit about social membership and day licenses in last week’s blab certainly opened the proverbial.

Union chairmen and secretaries have cursed me on more than one occasion during the week, as their phones have been ringing off the hook.

It’s like Black Friday for canoeists. The Cappies did not take kindly to

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being left off the wagon, and have almost knocked the door down.

Along with all the excitement has come a few questions. I will try to explain.

Both the social membership and the day license (which changed its name to “event license” at the CSA AGM on Monday, as it also encompasses multi day races) were introduced to knock down a few “barriers to entry” to the sport.

Many of the non Land Rover Discovery type paddlers get a bit shell shocked when they are asked to pay four digit figures to enter their first race in a sport that they do not know whether they will like or not.

The main question being asked regarding the social membership is the question of club membership. The CSA constitution requires that all members of CSA need to be members of a recognised canoe club (and by virtue of this, a union).

The buffalo that you have thrown

at the problem only pays for your union and CSA portion, it does not include a club membership.

If you are already a member at a club, and enjoy the facilities, you can carry on as usual. If you don’t belong to a club, and have absolutely no desire to use any club facilities, you have a small, but not insurmountable problem. Clever unions like KNCU have floated a “virtual” club.

So, if you live in Kokstad and there is no local canoe club where you can leave your boat to squat (before it gets sold at the annual auction), or use their showers, or drink their cold beers, then you can belong to the virtual club.

Although the constitution stipulates that you need to belong to a club, it makes no mention of how much the club needs to charge you. Hopefully, the other unions will start to think out of the box and come up with a similar solution.

Bear in mind that the social membership category only allows

you to enter small, local flatwater races and inshore surfski races. It was also not designed for people with short arms and long pockets who are looking to side step their club fees and use the showers and drink the beers in any case.

The “event license” was not put in place for new comers. It is strictly for paddlers who have already been fully registered members of a club before. If you are one of these, you can enter one race per year without having to pay any registration at all. You would just need to pay the event entry, plus a further 50% of what the entry is, again.

So, for a race like the Berg, with an entry fee of R3000, it does not make sense to take advantage of this offer, unless your basic arithmetic is Zumaesque.

collin simpkins

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