All the presidents’ people

A roll call of the more or less reprehensible in South African cricket, recording their names and the context of their involvement.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

DESPITE mounting pressure from every stakeholder in South African cricket, along with the threat of either state control or international suspension — or both — two votes went against appointing the interim board at CSA’s members council meeting on Monday.

The council is the game’s highest authority in the country, and thus central to the shambles cricket has been steered into during the last three years. So it was surprising that it initially rejected, in a letter to sports minister Nathi Mthethwa last Wednesday, the get-out-of-jail card represented by Mthethwa’s proposed interim board. Only following four meetings after that was the light seen, and even then not unanimously. That does not bode well for the hope that the board and the council find ways to work together, which both have expressed. 

Council members received a summary of Monday’s vote, not a breakdown. Cricbuzz has been told who the dissenters might be, and has asked them to confirm. Neither has responded. Even so, we know who sits on the members council, and how long they have been there — crucial facts in the effort to root out the rot. 

The structure normally comprises representatives of CSA’s 12 provincial affiliates, its two associates, and CSA’s president and vice-president. Of the current members, five were part of the council on September 28, 2017: Rudy Claassen, Craig Nel, Donovan May, Rihan Richards and Angelo Carolissen. A sixth who was around then, Oupa Nkagisang, hasn’t been part of council business since December 2018, when CSA took control of the affiliate he leads on claims of maladministration.

The 2017 date is important because it was when Thabang Moroe made the unlikely leap from serving as Gauteng’s president and CSA’s vice-president to CSA’s acting chief executive, a vacancy created by Haroon Lorgat’s engineered ousting. Also crucial is that it was the board, not the council, that installed Moroe despite the fact that — CSA told parliament in October — he was not qualified for the position.

The board responsible for appointing Moroe comprised Chris Nenzani, Beresford Williams, Richards, Zola Thamae, Tando Ganda, Faeez Jaffar, Norman Arendse, Mohammed Iqbal Khan, Dawn Mokhobo, Vusi Pikoli and Louis von Zeuner, although Arendse missed key meetings because of ill health. Along with Moroe, Nenzani, Williams, Thamae, Ganda and Richards also sat on the council at that stage. Richards is the only survivor who was part of both of those bodies. He is now the acting president of the council.

When Lorgat left CSA, it had a bank balance of the equivalent of USD73.7-million and did not want for sponsors. Moroe was appointed to the job proper by the board on July 17, 2018. When he was suspended on charges of serious misconduct in December, having given himself sweeping powers, it was projected that CSA would be USD68.4-million in debt by the end of the 2022 rights cycle. Sponsors had either announced their impending departure or were scaling back their commitment.

Tebogo Siko, Anne Vilas, Ben Dladla, Xolani Vonya, Xander Snyders, Ashraf Burns, Dawid Roodt and Simphiwe Ndzundzu became part of the council after Moroe was appointed in a permanent capacity, and thus cannot be blamed for abiding by the board’s decision. Vilas, Burns and Roodt came onto the council between May and August this year — after Moroe was suspended — so are unsullied by this saga.

The same cannot be said for Claassen, Nel, May, Richards, Siko and Carolissen. May and Siko joined the board last year, in February and September, and Carolissen in September 2018, so they are even more culpable. They didn’t help appoint Moroe, but they also didn’t stop him damaging the game.

After months of unheeded calls for the board to go, Nenzani resigned as CSA’s president on August 17. He was followed by the remaining members on October 25 and 26: Williams, Carolissen, May, Siko, Thamae, John Mogodi, Dheven Dharmalingham, Marius Schoeman, Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw and Vuyokazi Memani-Sedile. But Carolissen, May and Siko are still with us as affiliate presidents and thus council members.

The point of this roll call of the more or less reprehensible is to record the names of those involved in South African cricket’s ongoing ugliness and to sketch the context of their involvement. It isn’t intended to make for sparkling reading. 

The names of 31 administrators are recorded above. That only three of them — Vilas, Burns and Roodt — can be given a clean audit is an indictment on the state of the game in this country. And even that is conditional: we don’t know whether any or two of them voted against the sanity of allowing the interim board to be appointed.

As for the other, blemished 28, we know what you did last summer. And the summer before that. And the one before that. And before that. And in the winters, too …  

First published by Cricbuzz.  

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87 nominees, 6 months, no appointments: CSA’s search for independent directors drags on

Is CSA’s board afraid of exposing its incompetence to new members? Or are they waiting for incompetents to be nominated?

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

CRICKET South Africa (CSA) have had at least 87 nominations for the three vacancies for independent directors on their board. Yet none of those openings has been filled despite existing for almost six months.

That failure alone rings alarm bells about the way the game is being administered in South Africa. But, added to the suspensions of senior CSA staff, most of them unresolved, and the dearth of leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, it only builds the widespread disbelief and disgust that the board members remain in office.

That might change at the annual meeting scheduled for September 5. But the damage has long since been done under this board’s watch, what with CSA estimated to lose more than R1-billion by the end of the 2022 rights cycle. At least, that was the projection before the pandemic plunged the world’s economy into chaos and uncertainty. Given those circumstances responsible administrators would see the value in shoring up the independent component of a derelict, destructive board. Responsible administrators are hard to find in South Africa.

How have board members clung to their positions in the throes of shambling mismanagement and unprecedented financial strife? CSA’s highest authority, the members council, which has the authority to dissolve the board, is dominated by board members: six of the current board of eight also sit on the members council. They are hardly going to vote themselves out of business — especially as a seat on CSA’s board can be worth R400,000 a year to incumbents.

Albeit after presiding over so much that had gone so wrong, Shirley Zinn, Mohamed Iqbal Khan and Dawn Mokhobo resigned as independent directors in the first week of December — which ended with the suspension of chief executive Thabang Moroe, whose ballooning, recklessly wielded power was a factor in their decision to walk away.

Moroe’s removal from the equation cleared the way for progress: it is understood Graeme Smith, CSA’s director of cricket, refused to accept that job while Moroe was part of CSA. But as disciplinary procedures against Moroe have yet to be completed he is still being paid his monthly salary, which is believed to be R350,000.

Moroe enjoys significant support on the board, where he previously served as vice-president under Chris Nenzani, who has been president since February 2013. Last year changes to CSA’s constitution were engineered to prop Nenzani up as he neared the end of his second term, which would otherwise have been his last.

Thus it isn’t surprising there are vacancies for independent directors on CSA’s board. But is the members council — more than a third of it made up of by board members — delaying the process for fear of exposing their own and the board’s incompetence to more able eyes? Or are they waiting for incompetents of their own ilk to be nominated, and so enable the shoddy show to go on?

One well regarded business figure with experience as a company director and in cricket administration said they had “put my name forward late last year but haven’t heard anything”. Maybe credible candidates should stop holding their breath. “They’re not keen to go out publicly,” a source with knowledge of CSA machinations told Cricbuzz. “Seems like they still want to hand pick independents instead of going for the best.”

The agenda for a members council teleconference on April 9 said “the list of previously shortlisted candidates does not fully encompass skills needed on the CSA board, which therefore necessitates the head-hunting of candidates with the requisite skills and experience outside of the shortlisted candidates”. If that wasn’t a big enough hint that the matter was to remain an inside job, it was proposed that, “[I]n the event that the interim selection panel [established on February 12 to find new independent directors] is authorised to extend the recruitment, the board members and members council be invited to nominate potential candidates they deem would add value to the CSA board and submit those nominations with their respective curriculum vitae to the secretariat”. More names? When there are already 29 times as many as there are positions available? At least the members council was reminded to “[keep] in mind that these nominations would be in addition to the current 87 candidates being considered”.

Asked to confirm that still more nominations had been demanded, and why that might have happened, CSA spokesperson Thamie Mthembu offered nothing illuminating or helpful. Instead he said that “the processes involving the nominations for the vacant positions of independent directors have not yet been concluded and as such, CSA is presently unable to share any new knowledge with members of the media”.

That’s as close to engaging with relevant issues as CSA’s elected echelons venture. Just how out-of-touch the board is was revealed in a release on March 25, which was issued in part to pay tribute to former Western Province player Noel Brache, who died the previous day. “Graham will be particularly remembered for his contribution to the development of youth cricket in the Western Province,” Beresford Williams, CSA’s vice-president and formerly Western Province’s president, was quoted as saying. “Graham” was corrected to “Noel” in an update. But that happened under cover of adding a quote from another administrator and without pointing out the original clanger, which could by then have been published.

Nenzani — CSA’s president, lest we have all forgotten — was last heard from in January. Not once since the coronavirus cast cricket deep into the unknown has he emerged to show anything like leadership. Instead it has been left to Jacques Faul, CSA’s acting chief executive, and Smith to explain how the game plans to survive the crisis. Happily for the cricketminded public, they are responsive to the press and have proved themselves as people for the trenches: Smith on the field, Faul as a fire fighter when pyromaniacs in suits burn down the game.

South African cricket can trust in them. In too many of the rest, not so much. Maybe three among the 87, or more, who are still in limbo after nearly six months will put a dent in the credibility deficit.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Leading Edge: One more time with feeling

South African cricket needs a strong press now more than ever. Happily, we are stronger now than ever.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

THIS column first appeared seven years and a month ago. Twenty-seven men’s South Africa Test players, among them wonders of world cricket like Kagiso Rabada and Quinton de Kock, have been minted in that time.

Others — not least Faf du Plessis, Dean Elgar and Temba Bavuma — have carved places in the memory and indeed the heart.

Twenty-two have, in the past seven years and a month, gone quietly into that good night of Test retirement.

Along with the triumphant triumvirate of Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher, their number includes AB de Villiers, Morné Morkel, Dale Steyn and Hashim Amla.

That’s a bloody good squad of 12, a dazzling dozen, even if it is lopsided with three wicketkeepers and nary a spinner.

So much for the heroes.

This column has outlived the tenures of two Cricket South Africa (CSA) chief executives, but not the organisation’s current president. Originally elected more than six years ago, he has found a way to cling on despite having served both his allotted terms. As for the incumbent chief executive, may the cricketing gods watch over him. Closely.

The incumbent CSA board? Not worth feeding. For them to countenance the desperation that cricket in South Africa has sunk into and not be seen to do a damn thing about it makes them, at best, uncaring and, at worst, complicit. 

Consider yourselves named and shamed Chris Nenzani, Beresford Williams, Zola Thamae, Tebogo Siko, Donovan May, Jack Madiseng, Angelo Carolissen, Mohamed Iqbal Khan, Dawn Mokhobo, Shirley Zinn, Steve Cornelius and Marius Schoeman.

So much for the suits.

South African cricket needs a strong press now more than ever. Happily, we are stronger now than ever. Note: press. Not media. The electronic section of the industry is either compromised by the need to hang onto rights, or hamstrung by the subjects of their brief interviews having too much control over what is broadcast. In cricket, as in so much else, journalism is written. Not broadcast. 

It’s been a hell of a ride coming up, before the 10am diary meeting on Tuesday, with a decent enough pitch for a piece to be filed on Friday — near as can be to a prescribed length, which this week is 670 words, if you want to know — and published — still relevant, come what may — on Sunday.

By this columnist’s reckoning, that’s happened around 300 times.

But now it’s over. Almost. One more time. With feeling.

It has been a singular privilege and, mostly, a pleasure to sit down once a week and try to compose something about this richly writable game that might make you smile, care or think a little more. Sometimes it’s pissed you off properly? Thank you.

Be assured that your attention has never been taken for granted, and that the most important factor in this finely balanced equation is not the players, the suits, the editor, the publisher, the paper itself nor even the game. It certainly isn’t me. It’s you.

“Why should anyone bother reading this?” 

That’s me quoting myself, and it’s the question I ask before I begin every story I write. It isn’t always answered as well as I would like, but that’s part of the challenge: to try to keep doing it better.

“You must love cricket,” I’m often told. I don’t — do crime reporters love crime? But I do love writing about cricket.

On Thursday I had occasion to be in the same room where the King commission hearings were conducted in 2000, and for the first time since then. I looked at the same doorway we all stared at waiting for Hansie Cronjé to arrive, and shivered. The feeling was the same 19 years on. It was, still, like waiting for JFK to get shot.

Columnists come and columnists go, but cricket remains. It is the most cherished constant for those of a particular disposition.

Where is this columnist going? Not far. And he remains committed to finding out why the lying bastards are lying.

That’s 669 words. Close enough.

First published by the Sunday Times.