“The delayed forensic report had nothing to do with it.” – Steve Cornelius says workload prompted his resignation.
TELFORD VICE | Cape Town
IN an organisation as troubled as Cricket South Africa (CSA), the resignation of the independent board member who chairs the social and ethics committee, and sits on the audit and risk as well as the human resource and remuneration committees, would be a fire in need of a loud alarm.
But not if that marks the third time in the past seven days that someone senior has walked away. Then it’s just another punch in the face of an organisation that is already out on its feet.
Steve Cornelius’ decision to join the march out of CSA was revealed on Friday. He follows Jacques Faul, who resigned as acting chief executive on Monday, and Chris Nenzani, who quit as president on Saturday. Of the board of 12 who were in office in December, six have given up their positions.
Crucially, the still to be released, much mythologised forensic report — ostensibly aimed at gathering enough evidence to summarily sack suspended chief executive Thabang Moroe but thought to contain information that could implicate other CSA heavyweights in wrongdoing — is with the audit and risk committee on which Cornelius sat.
The fact that the report is not yet available was the cause of the postponement of Friday’s meeting between CSA and a parliamentary committee, which was shaping up to be a knockout blow with calls flying in for the entire board to be sacked and CSA to be out under government administration. Nenzani told the same committee on June 20: “There will be a report that will be received at the close of business today … By the end of [June] the forensic auditors have promised us that they will give us the full and complete report.”
Cornelius is a law professor. He is the University of Pretoria’s (UP) head of the department of private law and the director for the centre of intellectual property law, and has been admitted as a high court advocate. He is thus pre-disposed to be allergic to dodgy dealings, and would pay a high price if it was discovered he wasn’t. Did he see devils in the details of the report’s continued failure to emerge, and thus resolve to put daylight between himself and CSA?
“The delayed forensic report had nothing to do with it,” Cornelius told Cricbuzz. “The delay is purely to make sure the legal technicalities are dealt with so that they do not blow up when the report is released. The members’ council [CSA’s highest authority] resolved that it must be available to them before the annual meeting [on September 5] so that they do not vote someone onto the board and then discover the person is tainted. So I am sure it will be out soon.”
Rather than giving Cornelius the last push out of the door, the departures of Nenzani and Faul “actually almost made me reconsider my decision to resign”. But other issues held sway: “I have been mulling this for a few weeks now. But, in the end, I would have had to wait another month before the annual meeting to step down and then half of the semester would have been done. I just have too much to do to get my students through this year.”
Those demands are challenging, as Cornelius explained: “I think the simple answer is that one can only live on two hours sleep per day for so long. In the first semester, I taught a core module with 800 students as well as an elective with 100 students. This semester I teach a core module with 600 students. On top of that, I am head of department and the faculty research coordinator (since we do not have a deputy dean for research). I teach an LLM [masters in law] programme as well this semester.
“I came to a point where I would have to miss a meeting at UP to attend to CSA or I would miss a meeting at CSA to attend to my work at UP. So I needed to cut back. I also resigned as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Private Law so that I can focus on my work at UP. I think my batteries are just completely flat.”
Cricketminded South Africans, who have had to put up with a board either complicit in running the game into the ground or are powerless to stop that happening, know exactly how he feels.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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