Sports Minister Steve Tshwete has taken steps - described as draconian by opposition parties - to empower his ministry to intervene in and control the affairs of South Africa's sporting federations.

The politically ambitious Tshwete's career ambitions were jolted by his crushing defeat in an election contest against Terror Lekota for the national chairmanship of the African National Congress last December but he has fought back with plans to expand his ministry's role.

Two bills have been drafted to achieve that end: the South African Sports Commission Bill, which provides for the establishment of a Sports Commission, and National Sport and Recreation Bill, which sets Tshwete up as the generalissimo of South African sport and recreation.

Unlike the National Sports Council - which waged a successful political war to unseat the immediate past president of the South African Rugby Football Union, Louis Luyt - the Sports Commission will be a statutory body with prescribed legislative powers.

The 32-member Sports Commission will almost certainly reflect the political dominance of the African National Congress.

The National Sports Council (NSC) and the National Olympic Committee of South Africa (NOCSA) will each elect seven members to the Sports Commission. Both, significantly, have ANC chairmen. That aside, the Sports Minister will appoint seven Sports Commission members, including its chairman and deputy chairman.

The most controversial aspect in Tshwete's proposed network to "co-ordinate" the administration of SA sport relates to interrelated clauses in the National Sport and Recreation Bill.

One compels sporting and recreational bodies to register with the Sports Commission in order to fulfil their administrative functions lawfully.

Another stipulates that it will be an offence, punishable by a fine (no limit is specified), or imprisonment for up to two years, or a combination of both, for officials to organise sporting or recreational events if registration has not taken place.

The bill offers the bland assurance that registration will not diminish the independence of sporting and recreational institutions. At the same time, however, it empowers the minister to "determine general policy" in sport and recreation and states unequivocally that the policy is binding on "all parties."

The minister's power is justified in terms of laudable aims. These include "correcting imbalances," "promoting equity and democracy" and "instituting affirmative action controls."

Read together with a White Paper which preceded the bills, one of the objectives of ministerial intervention is to ensure that national teams reflect South Africa's "racial demographics." Lurking behind that sentiment is the vision of a national team composed of racial quotas.

Another point of concern is a clause providing for "dispute resolution." In event of a dispute within a sport or recreation body "any member" who still feels aggrieved after the matter has been dealt with internally can ask the Sports Commission to intervene. "The decision of the Sports Commission will be final."

Thus, on the face of it, a single disgruntled member can undermine the autonomy of a sports or recreation body, even if he or she is unrepresentative of majority opinion within the organisation.

A sub section of the same clause compounds the problem for those who feel that the independence of sports administrators or recreation organisers is undermined by the bills. It empowers the Sports Commission to initiate investigations on the mere suspicion of corruption, acrimony or discrimination in sporting or recreational institutions and to request the President to appoint a legal commission of inquiry into the matter.

The dispute resolution clause should be seen in the context of the conflict within the South African Rugby Football Union between Luyt and disgruntled elements led by NSC president Mlukele George and backed by Tshwete.

The aftermath of the conflict lives on: political pressure, in the form of NSC threats to scupper international rugby tours to South Africa, forced Luyt to resign and the union to agree to allow NSC nominated candidates to fill four of the 11 positions on the rugby union's national executive.

In event of a similar dispute in rugby or another sport, the Sports

Commission will be empowered to intervene by law and the sporting administrators will be powerless to stop it.

A benign interpretation of the two bills presents them as social engineering in the interests of forging national unity from the disparate racial components of South Africa's population.

The two main opposition parties disagree. The Democratic Party sees the bills as another sign of the ANC's "obsession with regulating and controlling the lives of ordinary South Africans from workplace to recreation." The National Party views them as an attempt by Big Brother to coerce sport institutions to "conform to (his) every prescriptive whim."