Controversial Athletics Free State (AFS) president Steven Swarts has been suspended pending a disciplinary inquiry, Athletics SA (ASA) said on Saturday.
Swarts, the stepfather and coach of world 400m world record-holder Wayde van Niekerk, was found guilty of sexual assault in 2020 and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, suspended for five years.
In 2018 Swarts had inserted fingers into the victim, a female athlete he was coaching at the time, while giving her a massage.
But despite the conviction he was elected as president of the provincial body in late 2023 and when some club officials called for a vote of no confidence in him they were suspended by the AFS board.
Swarts’s wife Odessa, Van Niekerk’s mother, is part of the board.
“The ASA board unanimously resolved at its meeting on Thursday to suspend ... Swarts ... with immediate effect, pending the convening of a disciplinary inquiry into his conduct that has brought ASA into disrepute,” the national federation said in a statement on Saturday morning.
ASA said the AFS membership “appeared to have been misled about the gravity of the offence and its outcome”.