Marius Schoeman – Bulletproof Truth

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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72 hours that shook SA cricket’s world

CSA’s entire board has resigned, although some will roam the game like zombies. What made them go after months of bloodymindedness, and what happens now?

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

SEVENTY-TWO hours after Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) board were asked, not for the first time, to step aside and, also not for the first time, refused, all 10 directors had resigned.

The announcement that Zola Thamae, Marius Schoeman, Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw and Vuyokazi Memani-Sedile were out of the game was posted on CSA’s official twitter account on Monday morning.

They followed Beresford Williams, Angelo Carolissen, Donovan May, Tebogo Siko, John Mogodi and Dheven Dharmalingham, who quit on Sunday.

“After the Members’ Council had deliberated and resolved that in order to best serve the interest of cricket in South Africa, the entire Board should resign — which they did,” CSA tweeted. “All Independent and Non-Independent Directors have now resigned.”

What cricket’s stakeholders have been calling for since December has been achieved. Now what?

CSA are nominally led by Rihan Richards, the former board member who represents Northern Cape on the Members Council — cricket’s highest authority — of which he was named president on Sunday. But Richards could be reduced to a figurehead by Wednesday.

Sports minister Nathi Mthethwa will wait until close of business on Tuesday for CSA to argue against his intervention in their affairs. Whatever they say is unlikely to cut much ice with him.

Not so fast, sportslovers. Having allowed cricketminded South Africans to enjoy the moment of the despised board’s demise, CSA put out a lunchtime release that said: “All resignations are with immediate effect except for three members, namely, Zola Thamae, John Mogodi and Donovan May, who will remain as directors until the interim board structure has been appointed to ensure the continuity and stability of the organisation.”

The release also said Richards would chair this zombie board, which might not be with us for long.

Mthethwa will probably instruct the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) to establish an interim structure to control cricket, at least until CSA’s annual meeting on December 5.

Speculation on who might be part of this body is running wild, but it seems sure to include a respected former player and a figure who has high level experience with the International Cricket Council.

South Africans more interested in who is on the field rather than in the boardroom should be assured that the domestic season will still start on November 2, and that England remain on course to send their men’s team to the country on November 16 to play six white-ball internationals.

But what changed between the Members Council asking the board to go at a meeting on Thursday night, and being rebuffed, and Monday morning?

Because the players in this contest wear collar and tie and not pads and helmets doesn’t make the question any less intriguing.

The answer could lay in the weakness that has been baked into CSA’s organisational design. The same Members Council that asked the board to resign includes six now former board members — who opposed the proposal when it was debated.

But they were outvoted by the eight people on the Members Council who were not on the board, and it was resolved that the board should be asked to relinquish their positions.

That put the suits who were on both structures in an invidious position. They couldn’t very well refuse to enact, at board level, a Members Council resolution they had been part of, even though they had dissented. Once the decision to ask the board to quit had been made they were duty bound to walk the Members Council’s talk.

Even so, except for Williams, the non-independent directors will remain on the Members Council as provincial representatives.

That no doubt accounts for the jarringly touchy feely tone of other CSA tweets on Monday: “The Members’ Council thanks every member who diligently served on the Board and selflessly sacrificed their time for extended and often, overwhelming periods, to assist [CSA].

“The Members’ Council appreciates their commitment to cricket and despite the turbulent economic climate, CSA, under their leadership, received an unqualified audit for the financial year ending 30 April 2020. The Council wishes them well in their future endeavours.”

The undearly departed directors should be under no illusion that that sentiment is shared in the provinces from which most of them came, and to which they owed their places on the board.

“It’s a shit show,” Garret Perry, the vice-chair of the Nelson Mandela Bay Cricket Association and the president of Port Elizabeth Cricket Club, told Daily Maverick on Monday.

“Maybe it’s because there are people in important positions at CSA who have never played the game, or maybe because they are trying to make as much as they can out of cricket.

“But you get the feeling that people who do want to give back to the game and want to do the right thing — people like [former acting chief executive] Jacques Faul — are worked out of their positions.”

Independent directors are not part of the Members Council, so aren’t subject to the kind of pressure faced by non-independents.

But when the independent Dharmalingham — the only director who was willing to resign on Thursday — went on Sunday, the other independents, Schoeman, Kula-Ameyaw and Memani-Sedile, had nowhere to hide.

Dharmalingham, who chaired the finance committee, and Schoeman, who was in charge of the social and ethics committee, brought competence to a structure in dire need of exactly that. But the removal of Kula-Ameyaw, the transformation chair, will not be lamented.

Faul’s resignation on August 17 is understood to have been fallout from the publication in the Sunday Times of a full-page advertisement that cost CSA R521,000 — and which was placed at Kula-Ameyaw’s insistence.

The chief financial officer and the chief executive were required to approve expenditure of that size. Pholetsi Moseki, the CFO, at first opposed it but then made a curious about turn. Faul was never in favour, and maintained his stance. The advertisement was published nonetheless.

Dharmalingham boxed clever in his explanation to parliament on October 13: “As a non-exec director, we do not have any mandate to authorise any expenditure. So, from that perspective, Dr Eugenia could not have authorised that expenditure.

“In terms of the process within the organisation, any procurement goes through procurement and, depending on the quantum — and in this case the quantum was such that it had to be approved by at least the CFO and the CEO — in this scenario it was actually approved by the CFO and it was done within his mandate.”

The fact that Faul did not sign the purchase order, as he would have had to do for the money to be spent legitimately, was conveniently glossed over.

By then, it was plain Kula-Ameyaw was ill-suited to her role. On August 28 she told a press conference: “What I don’t like about cricket is they don’t predict how long they will play. Football is 45, 45 [minutes]; then you are done. I only watch the highlights of cricket, not the whole game. I don’t have time for that.”

On September 16, after Momentum, one of CSA’s few remaining sponsors, said they were ending most of their relationship with cricket, she tweeted: “Momentum forgets that we invest hundreds of millions in Momentum in our SOE [state-owned enterprises] and pension funds. I remember asking for the BBBEE [broad-based black economic empowerment, and affirmative action policy] certificate in my other board.”

Momentum are a Level One Contributor in BBBEE terms, the highest certification there is, and they have a BBBEE recognition level of 135%.

Kula-Ameyaw had ended her tweet: “Just check before you make an irrational decision.”

Sound advice. Clearly, it was not taken.

First published by Daily Maverick.

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Four more run … from the game … Nathi’s in the mood

“All resignations are with immediate effect except for three members …” – CSA take 10 steps forward, three steps backward.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

THE resignations of the remaining four CSA board members were revealed on Monday, a day after six others quit. That clears the way for an interim structure to be put in place by government, through its satellites, to run the game.

Former acting president Beresford Williams led the way out of the organisation on Sunday. He was followed by Angelo Carolissen, Donovan May, Tebogo Siko, John Mogodi and Dheven Dharmalingham. Only Zola Thamae, Marius Schoeman, Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw and Vuyokazi Memani-Sedile were left.

But, on Monday morning, CSA tweeted: “After the members council had deliberated and resolved that in order to best serve the interest of cricket in South Africa, the entire board should resign — which they did. All independent and non-independent directors have now resigned.”

A few hours later, CSA appeared to backtrack in a release that said: “All resignations are with immediate effect except for three members, namely, Zola Thamae, John Mogodi and Donovan May, who will remain as directors until the interim board structure has been appointed to ensure the continuity and stability of the organisation.”

The release said Rihan Richards, who was appointed acting president of the members council on Sunday, would chair the board comprising Thamae, Mogodi and May.

That comes after umpteen calls from a range of stakeholders, since December, for the board to go. And a day before CSA runs out of time to tell sports minister Nathi Mthethwa why he shouldn’t intervene in the game.

Mthethwa first gave the job of sorting out cricket to the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC), which in September told CSA’s now former board and key executives to step aside while a task team investigated the game’s ills. The board refused, and left SASCOC with the impression that it would unleash lawyers to avoid being usurped. SASCOC passed the buck back to Mthethwa, who gave CSA until close of business on October 27 to argue against him taking action against it — which could include removing the Proteas from the international arena.

Whether the board’s resignation en masse will be enough to stop Mthethwa from exercising the more extreme aspects of his authority remains to be seen, especially as executive staff like acting chief executive Kugandrie Govender, director of cricket Graeme Smith and company secretary Welsh Gwaza appear to be still in their positions.

It is unclear who will be on the interim committee, although there seems to be support for a senior player representative and an ICC voice. Also not known is whether the game will be handed back to CSA after its annual meeting on December 5.

What is known is that the domestic season will start on November 2, and that England’s men’s team will arrive next month to play three ODIs and three T20Is.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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CSA board resignations: too few, too late

“CSA understands and appreciates the board members’ reasoning behind their resignations, based on their love for cricket and their respect of CSA.” – CSA’s twitter account is in deep denial.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

SIX Cricket South Africa (CSA) board members down. Four to go. And they may yet go quietly into that good night when the game no longer has to suffer some of the most reckless, thoughtless, damaging administrators in all of sport.

Beresford Williams resigned as CSA’s acting president on Sunday, along with five other board members: non-independents Angelo Carolissen, Donovan May, Tebogo Siko and John Mogodi, and Dheven Dharmalingham, an independent. That leaves Zola Thamae, a non-independent, and Marius Schoeman, Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw and Vuyokazi Memani-Sedile, independents all. But already there are whispers that they, too, are looking to make like Donald. As in Duck, not Allan.

No doubt sports minister Nathi Mthethwa, who is waiting until after Tuesday to tell CSA what he plans to do to them for running cricket into the ground, has noted the exits with satisfaction. The rest of us will wonder what the hell took them so long.

CSA have been in trouble more or less since September 2017, when Thabang Moroe was named acting chief executive. Despite him not meeting the minimum requirements for the job, the board appointed him permanently in July 2018. He was suspended in December last year and fired in August this year.

And that’s only one of the myriad self-harming catastrophes into which the board have shambled. Most of the board members who made the Moroe mess had left the organisation before Sunday and been replaced, but the staggering level of denial needed to allow this to be posted on CSA’s official twitter account even as the blood gleamed wet on the floor — “CSA understands and appreciates the board members’ reasoning behind their resignations, based on their love for cricket and their respect of CSA” — proves the problems remain rudely alive and shockingly well. A public apology is the least of what is required, but don’t hold your breath: you’re dealing with something like that other Donald. As in Trump.

Since December, sponsors, the South African Cricketers’ Association, the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc), Mthethwa, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Sport, Arts and Culture, and too many ordinary, ticket-buying, TV-watching, hero-worshipping cricketminded South Africans to count have all raged at CSA’s board.

But, as recently as September 18, Williams was going nowhere slowly. “I believe I’m still committed‚ I’m passionate‚ and can still contribute and serve the game; I choose not to go,” he replied when asked, during a press conference, why he had not resigned.

“We as a board and as collective leadership have dealt with matters head-on and I do believe we’re moving forward as a collective. I’ll continue to serve until such time as the members council decides otherwise.

“I took a decision that I either move on or I continue to serve. I decided on the latter to serve the game that I’m passionate about. I’ve been a servant of the game at various levels.

“If there was anything in which I believe I acted irresponsibly or not in the interests of the game as a director‚ I would have moved on.”

Presumably Williams felt the same way on Thursday when he and the rest of his board went into a meeting with the Members Council, CSA’s highest authority, but which includes six members of the board itself. Resignations were called for, and not given — not least because, Daily Maverick understands, board members were advised by powerful figures within CSA that there was no legal basis to demand that they remove themselves. You heard the man: “I choose not to go.”

What changed between Thursday and Sunday, when the members council met with the board again? That is not yet known. Neither do we know what will happen next.

But we can be fairly sure Mthethwa will tell Sascoc to appoint an interim committee to administer cricket at least until CSA’s annual meeting on December 5. That is likely to happen after close of business on Tuesday, when CSA run out of road to avoid the minister stepping in. And so he should.

For one thing, four board members are hanging on. For another, four of those who have quit are still on the Members Council. For still another, CSA have invented the position of “acting president of the Members Council” and given it to Northern Cape Cricket’s Rihan Richards — a former board member.

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Please, Mr Mthethwa, do your worst.

First published by Daily Maverick.

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Looming Mthethwa deadline flushes CSA suits

“I wish and hope that CSA finds peace in the coming months and cricket takes centre stage.” – Dheven Dharmalingham after resigning from CSA’s board.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

PUSH finally came to shove for troubled CSA on Sunday, when acting president Beresford Williams led an exodus of six resignations from the board. The mass walkout follows months of calls from various stakeholders for the board to go, three days after it refused the latest demand that it do so, and two days before government is due to say what shape its promised intervention into the game’s affairs will take.

Williams, Angelo Carolissen, Donovan May, Tebogo Siko, John Mogodi and Dheven Dharmalingham all walked the plank. Only Zola Thamae, a non-independent, and Marius Schoeman, Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw and Vuyokazi Memani-Sedile, all independents, remain aboard the burning deck of cricket’s listing ship. But there are indications that they might also be on their way out.

Northern Cape Cricket president Rihan Richards, a former board member, has been installed as president of the members council, CSA’s highest authority where each of the 14 provinces is represented.

Williams, who assumed office when Chris Nenzani resigned in August, also left the members council — which still includes Carolissen, May, Siko and Mogodi. Whether their continued presence, and that of the four remaining board members, will prompt tough action from sports minister Nathi Mthethwa remains to be seen. Under South African law, Mthethwa has the authority to withdraw the Proteas from the international arena. But that seems unlikely as Mthethwa, along with the health and home affairs ministries, has granted permission for England to tour next month despite South Africa’s pandemic regulations keeping the borders closed to travellers from the United Kingdom.

Dharmalingham, who chaired the finance committee and first tendered his resignation on Friday, is the only non-independent board member who quit on Sunday. “I wish and hope that CSA finds peace in the coming months and cricket takes centre stage,” CSA quoted Dharmalingham as saying on its twitter account.

Peace is too ambitious a goal for an organisation that has lurched from one crisis to the next for the past three years. If they weren’t in trouble for shoddy management they were in the spotlight for questionable governance, and all against a backdrop of plummeting finances.

What will probably happen next is that Mthethwa, who has given CSA until October 27 to furnish him with reasons why he should not get involved in cricket, will order the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) to establish an interim committee to run the game until CSA’s annual meeting on December 5.

A brave new world awaits CSA, which has already been transformed from what it was on September 18, when Williams was asked at a press conference why he had not resigned. “I believe I’m still committed‚ I’m passionate‚ and can still contribute and serve the game. I choose not to go. We as a board and as collective leadership have dealt with matters head-on and I do believe we’re moving forward as a collective. I’ll continue to serve until such time as the members council decides otherwise. I took a decision that I either move on or I continue to serve. I decided on the latter to serve the game that I’m passionate about. I’ve been a servant of the game at various levels. If there was anything in which I believe I acted irresponsibly or not in the interests of the game as a director‚ I would have moved on.”

It appears Williams felt that way going into Thursday’s meeting of the members council, where the entire board was asked to resign and reportedly refused. What a difference three days makes.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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In allowing CSA an easy escape, parliament failed cricket

“I don’t even know this person who you are talking about. Who’s that person?” – committee chair Beauty Dlulane fails to recognise the name of Naasei Appiah, who is mentioned 10 times in a summary of the Fundudzi report.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

CSA will hold its board’s feet to the fire for losing its way before, during and after the tenure of Thabang Moroe, who was not qualified to be appointed chief executive. But the findings of the forensic investigation that was used to sack Moroe and might yet cost others their positions will not be made public.

Also, the conflict of interest inherent in CSA’s upper structures must be undone, the game will be in trouble if international teams do not resume touring soon, and government should interfere in cricket if needs be.

That was the extent of the value of the almost four hours CSA spent discussing the Fundudzi forensic report with a parliamentary committee on Tuesday. For the rest, CSA were in the unusual position of appearing to be the more competent people in the room. Then again, the other people in the virtual room for the online meeting were shockingly out-of-touch with the state of the game — and thus woefully unsuited to their roles.

Although the oversight committee, comprised of MPs from a range of parties, was furnished with the 468-page report on Friday, it was apparent that most members hadn’t bothered to give the document more than a cursory glance.

On being informed that Naasei Appiah had joined the meeting despite having been being fired as CSA’s chief operating officer — a decision he says he will fight — Beauty Dlulane, the committee chair, said: “I don’t even know this person who you are talking about. Who’s that person?” Appiah is mentioned 10 times in the summary of the forensic report released on October 5, and presumably more often in the full version. If Dlulane had been familiar with either document she would have known who he is.

Consequently, CSA’s representatives were able to deal easily with half-volleys instead of snorters and yorkers, correcting umpteen errors of fact committed by ignorant committee members as they went. The meeting was an exercise in worthlessness mitigated only by the contributions of Marius Schoeman, the CSA independent director who chairs its audit and risk committee.

“There is clarity that what happened happened under the watch of the board, and accountability rests with the board,” Schoeman said. “The board appoints the executive and has an oversight function. The current board has an accountability and a responsibility to address the findings [of the report]. No finding can be left and not be actioned on, and that’s the responsibility of the current board.” And the buck doesn’t stop with board members: “Every [CSA] employee who is implicated in the report will be addressed within the disciplinary code.”

When will the rest of us get a look at those 468 pages? “The report will remain confidential,” Schoeman said. “The feedback to stakeholders will be the actions that have been taken. We will not reveal details within the document. We will get a third-party assurance provider that will confirm that specific matters have been addressed.”

Much of the report deals with the failings of Moroe, who was dismissed in August. Should he have landed the post at all, considering he came to it from a midlevel position with a cellphone service provider? “As far as the question of the appointment of Mr Moroe, that he didn’t meet the minimum requirements, yes — you are correct,” Schoeman told a curious committee member. “It’s a finding that I find astonishing, in that one has minimum requirements. The report also indicates that the advertisement was different from the job description. In my experience those are things that should not happen.”

Much that shouldn’t happen does happen at CSA, not least because its highest authority, the members council where each of cricket’s 14 provinces is represented, also takes seven places on the 12-member board. That could change at the annual meeting, which is scheduled for December 5. “We realise that there’s much work to be done insofar as regaining the trust of our stakeholders, including the public,” Schoeman said. “One of the key factors, and it comes out of the report, is the inherent conflict of interest that exists because members of the members council are also board members. In terms of the members council charter and MOI [memorandum of incorporation] they have to act in the best interests of the affiliate members that has nominated them, but as a director they have to act in the best interests of CSA. I do not want to be in their shoes, because it’s difficult to wear those two hats. The priority is on doing what’s best for CSA, because the role of directors is governed by the Companies Act and overrides charters. Poor oversight, poor governance — it’s evident from the report; no doubt.”

Schoeman was supported by Dheven Dharmalingam, another CSA indepedent director, who said: “We need to make sure that, at the annual meeting, this board ends up with a majority of independent directors.”

Dharmalingam, CSA’s finance committee chair, made the case for government to allow South Africa to host international teams again in the wake of the coronavirus lockdown: “If we don’t start playing cricket, we don’t earn content revenue [from broadcast rights] and we don’t earn our share of the profit from the ICC, [and] this organisation will be in trouble.”

Teams from countries that have high virus infection rates need government permission to visit South Africa. England, who CSA hope will arrive near the end of the year to play six white-ball matches and put up to USD4.2-million into the coffers, is such a country. Will they be allowed to come?

Not by the tone of committee member Nocks Seabi’s view: “CSA is a public entity. It is running cricket as a sport on behalf of South Africans. If there is a need for government to intervene in the interests of South Africans, we do so.”

Seabi is an MP for the ruling African National Congress, which also counts sports minister Nathi Mthethwa among its members. In a letter, seen by Cricbuzz, to CSA’s acting president, Beresford Williams — who was forced to recuse himself from Tuesday’s meeting because he is implicated in the report — Mthethwa rasps that Williams is “kindly reminded that as a sovereign country in which I am the minister responsible for sport … there is a raft of laws at my disposal that empower me to deal effectively with recalcitrant behaviour within my portfolio”.

That authority includes the withdrawal of national colours, which would prevent South Africa’s teams from representing the country. As bad as things are, they could get worse.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Big day looms for cricket in South Africa. And for CSA.

“These discussions have taken place in light of the current cricketing landscape globally and in South Africa.” – Craig Bowen, New Balance’s South Africa representative, confirms the company is reconsidering its deal with CSA.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

TUESDAY looms as a watershed for South African cricket. Not because CSA will be back in parliament to explain itself to the same committee that shouted it down last week. Neither because cricket’s suits are due to meet with the head suit himself, the sports minister.

What means more is that Tuesday marks 220 days since the national men’s team were in action, their longest period of idleness since readmission in 1991. If not enough cricket of the kind that brings in revenue is played in South Africa the game will become a weekend hobby for committed amateurs — a scenario the pandemic has made exponentially more real, especially in an economy that was struggling before an invisible pathogen changed life and death as we know it.

But this truth has gone almost unnoticed by those who should be concerned with the good of the game. Instead they are more intent on making themselves heard to the people they need to impress, who themselves seem determined to make more noise than sense. While the game in the wider world has been confronting its frailties as an industry, South African cricket has been chasing its tail about chronic, deep-seated and relevant issues of governance, transformation and racism.

CSA’s presentation to the parliamentary portfolio committee on sport, which it planned to deliver last Tuesday, is a case in point. Seen by Cricbuzz, it amounts to 52 pages in which the virus features a grand total of once, and even then well down the priority list in a bullet point on page 41: “Player and staff salaries not cut or impacted by Covid-19.” Not that Marius Schoeman, the CSA board member entrusted with presenting the document to the committee, got anywhere close to page 41. He had barely begun when he was interrupted by MPs who wanted to know why CSA hadn’t released the full report of the Fundudzi forensic investigation into cricket’s litany of catastrophe. Allowed to resume after almost half-an-hour of self-serving bombast, Schoeman was soon derailed again.

If the committee had been more inclined to listen to voices other than its own, it might have learnt that CSA plans — the presentation paper says — to make “part of the membership requirements that the executive management teams of unions and the boards become predominantly black with a heavy focus on black female members in these critical positions. The intention is to identify at least 10 black female candidates. The onus will be placed on [provincial] affiliates to address the current status of non-transformed positions especially in CEO and executive positions. Failure by the unions to do this will result in financial penalties.” The process will start in December.

Considering only 58 of the 145 country’s current provincial board members are black, and that just 20 of the total are women, the importance of this goal is obvious. But where is cricket going to find, in a matter of weeks, as many as 10 black women who have the required skills and experience in a system that has historically been unwelcoming to women, and far more so to black women? The proposal seems less about remedying the situation than telling politicians what they want to hear.

There is similar concern in the presentation about the fact that “the number of selections for whites’ dwarfs the numbers for any of the black demographic”. Whites comprised 54% of South Africa’s players last season — more than double the 22% of blacks selected, and the 24% of brown players. Whether that will mean a revision of the race-based targets — at least six black or brown players in every South Africa XI, two of them black — or a greater say by the board in selection matters is unclear.

If last Tuesday’s meeting achieved anything it was CSA’s agreement that the complete Fundudzi report would be delivered to parliament by last Friday. That happened, but we should be braced for another bunfight on Tuesday if reports that names have been redacted are accurate.

Already the main purpose of the investigation appears to have been to enable CSA to rid itself of Thabang Moroe, who was sacked as chief executive in August on charges of “serious misconduct”. Indeed, the presentation that has yet to see the light of the committee room admits that, on July 2, some four months after the probe started, “The terms of reference of the forensic investigation were amended to permit the forensic investigator to provide the board with certain information/report chapters related to the conduct of certain members of the CSA management team, but excluding any information related to the investigation of the conduct of the board and the members council.” Why? “This was done to expedite the matter of the suspended CEO who had been under precautionary suspension for eight months.” So, not to spare others scrutiny that might show they acted in concert with Moroe, or aided and abetted him, or failed in their duty to subject his performance to the required oversight? “The terms of reference were not amended to absolve the board from being investigated.” Really? It’s difficult to accept the say-so of an organisation that has a track record of doing the wrong thing.

As bad as all of the above is, none of it is as urgent an existential threat as the coronavirus. But not, it seems, in the estimation of CSA, which would be better served taking its cue on how seriously to regard this threat to its core business from its dwindling number of commercial partners.

“There is no doubt that the coronavirus has impacted the game around the world,” Craig Bowen, the South African representative for New Balance, the national teams’ kit supplier, told Cricbuzz. “Every person and entity vested in the game has been affected and we are all working to mitigate this impact in the most constructive way possible.”

Asked about information from sources who say the company is considering ending its relationship with CSA, Bowen said: “I can confirm that New Balance is currently in discussions with CSA regarding the future of our partnership. These discussions have taken place in light of the current cricketing landscape globally and in South Africa in order to review the strategic imperatives of this partnership with the aim of determining the most beneficial route forward for both our brand, CSA and the cricketing public at large.”

Whether South Africa’s players are in danger of losing the shirts off their backs because of Covid-19 or that other virus in their midst, CSA itself — or both — is moot. But it’s not difficult to grasp why a kit supplier doesn’t see the point of handing out playing gear to teams that haven’t been able to get its logo onto screens for 220 straight days. And counting.

CSA will want to use its meeting with Nathi Mthethwa, the sports minister, to end that drought. Although lockdown regulations have been eased enough to allow teams to travel to South Africa, those from countries that have high rates of infection will not be allowed in. That includes England, who CSA are hoping to lure for a white-ball visit in the coming months that could earn more than USD4-million. The venture is not necessarily doomed because, as per government guidance, “any person from a country listed as having a high Covid-19 infection and transmission rate who wishes to undertake business travel into South Africa may, in writing, apply to the minister of home affairs and demonstrate reasons” why an exception should be made.

What will CSA promise Mthethwa to earn his blessing for England’s presence in the country? Better question: what won’t it be prepared to promise? South Africans who yearn to see their team play again had better be careful what they wish for. They may just get it.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Even pompous, parasitic, pathetic parliament is pissed off with CSA

South Africans who sat through this shambles of a parliamentary meeting were reminded, not for the first time, why they want their taxes back. And a new set of cricket suits while we’re at it.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

WHEN the sports portfolio committee of South Africa’s deeply dysfunctional parliament came face to face, virtually, with CSA’s heavyweights on Tuesday, they found themselves looking in the mirror. They didn’t like what they saw, and they said so.

For much of more than two hours, CSA was repeatedly branded as arrogant, disrespectful and undermining for failing to provide the committee with the full report on a forensic investigation into the ills afflicting a game that was in danger of destroying itself even before the pandemic arrived to hurry that process along.

By the end of the exercise, CSA had committed to complying with the committee’s demand to be furnished with the full report by Friday. “It’s a tipping point and a step in the right direction,” Marius Schoeman, the independent member of CSA’s board who chairs the finance committee and easily the most believable of all who attended Tuesday’s meeting, said of the parliamentary committee’s resolution. “The protocol to follow is that the members council will just be consulted and confirm that the board may release this report. It will be released in hard copy by Fundudzi [the firm that conducted the investigation] by Friday, close of business, 16 hours 30. If this is not done by 16:30 on Friday then I will resign.”

CSA received the document on July 31, but has resisted releasing it — including to the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC), who asked for it — citing legal and governance implications. Lawyers acting for CSA prepared a summary, which was made public on Monday. Angered by that, and by CSA’s admission that minister of sport Nathi Mthethwa had been given a copy of the report, the committee demanded the document.

That an institution as low in the public’s esteem as parliament, for many the epicentre of corruption in the country, should feel emboldened to lecture others on the rights and wrongs of anything will be seen as an indication of just how far cricket has fallen. Or taken as an instance of politicians using the opportunity to take the heat off themselves by attacking easy targets. Either way, South Africans who sat through this shambles were reminded, not for the first time, why they want their taxes back. And a new set of cricket suits while we’re at it.

The unfunny comedy started with committee chair Beauty Dlulane issuing a bumptious soliloquy about CSA’s failure to deliver on a promise made to the same committee in June that it would make the report available once it was complete. “I respected cricket’s leadership when they said they were waiting and processing,” Dlulane began. “But the respect I have given you I didn’t see in return.

“You think that this report does not belong to the committee. Why should we wait, five months down the line? And instead of this committee being given the full report [a summary] goes to the public. I’m very disappointed with your leadership for disrespecting even the chairperson of this committee, who gave you chances when the members [of the committee] said I shouldn’t.

“You didn’t have the courtesy of thinking, five months down the line, that there is a committee of parliament that you were supposed to prioritise. I don’t take kindly to what you have done to me. I’m so disappointed in your leadership that, five months down the line, you have done this to us.”

That set the tone for too many versions of Dlulane’s view, interspersed with infantile squabbling and occasional nuggets of relevance. Like the director general of sport, Vusumusi Mkhize, saying, “I can confirm that the report was delivered directly to the minister personally to minimise risk of the information leaking.” And another independent member of CSA’s board, Dheven Dharmalingam, reminding all present that the findings of an investigation, even if they had led to Thabang Moroe being fired as CSA chief executive, were minor compared to what loomed in the real world: “We need to get our players back to playing. If we don’t, when do we earn our next rand? What the business of CSA is all about is selling content. If our players are not playing we’re not going to survive as an organisation anyway. And hundreds of people in South Africa who are reliant for their livelihood on CSA will be impacted.”

South Africa’s fixture lists, domestic and international, are blank — not only as a result of CSA’s ineptitude but also because the borders remain closed to travelling teams. There are serious doubts about CSA’s ability to run the game, but there is no doubt that Covid-19, and the regulations to combat the spread of the virus, could kill it.

That didn’t stop Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, another of CSA’s independent directors, from wandering down a tangent and trying to argue that SASCOC, rather than parliament, should be furnished with the report: bizarre considering CSA was fighting desperately against doing exactly that just days ago. Kula-Ameyaw’s proposal was summarily shot down, prompting Dlulane to pronounce: “The more time we give you to talk as individuals, I’m suspecting you don’t understand what you want to do.”

At least she got that right.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Suits of different stripes in CSA’s doom spiral

“I unfortunately have to board a flight now.” – EP Cricket president Donovan May’s fourth and final failure to answer the same question.

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

LIKE a torpedoed ship, oil haemorrhaging out and water gushing in, Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) bumbling board is deep in its doom spiral. It will not rise, but still it tries, the impending demise ever more desperately denied. The sad saga reached a diabolical level between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, when two board members veered onto opposing paths.

First Jack Madiseng, Gauteng’s president, resigned his seat on the board, writing to president Chris Nenzani that “unfortunately moral and principle circumstances forced me to consider this action after witnessing the board refusing to take accountability and stepping down at the members council meeting [on Friday]”. Then came a tirade quoting Donovan May, the Eastern Province president and a board member, on TimesLIVE, the online platform of a national media group: “I am in full support of the board. I find nothing wrong with the board at all and I actually think that they have been doing a good job. The board is united and the members’ council has given us the green light, as you heard the president say at our AGM at the weekend. It is the media which is driving this thing. It is the media that is crucifying us.” Look at May in this light and he bears a striking resemblance to Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Saddam Hussein’s information minister who in March 2003 appeared on television in Baghdad to say there were no American tanks in the city — even as they rolled through the background behind him.

You wonder what May makes of the ultimatum on Thursday afternoon from financial services firm Momentum, CSA’s backer for one-day cricket from international level all the way down to the under-13s, that the company will “reconsider its … agreement at the end of the current season” unless six “requirements” are met. Top of the list was the “resignation of the current board of CSA (alternatively resignation of the current president and vice-president [Beresford Williams]) in order to address the leadership crisis at CSA”. The South African Cricketers’ Association have made the same demand, twice, and on Monday the declared they would “not lend credibility to the board of CSA by dealing with a ‘negotiating panel’ if this comprises any board members”.

We don’t have to wonder what Madiseng thinks. “If someone had to be fired or dismissed, in all honesty, the entire board should be fired or dissolved for rubbishing CSA’s brand,” he wrote in a letter to Nenzani and Williams on November 29.

Despite how this looks, Madiseng and May are from the same planet. That wasn’t always the case. Not long ago Madiseng was a staunch defender of Thabang Moroe, CSA’s chief executive, who was suspended on Friday for his role in taking the game dangerously close to self-destruction as a professional going concern. A few weeks ago May was said to be willing to go on record about his concerns over how the board were running the game. He was understood, for instance, to have opposed Moroe’s appointment as chief executive — surely a conflict considering Moroe was CSA’s vice-president — as well as the organisation changing their constitution to afford Nenzani a seventh year as president,

Contacted on November 20, May shouldered arms: “I cannot speak to you regarding these matters. You know only the CSA president can speak to the media regarding CSA matters. I can only speak to media regarding EP cricket matters. I’m sure you can understand.” We understood. But, clearly, he has changed his mind. Apparently not, and that despite the compelling evidence to the contrary, as quoted above. “As discussed I can only speak on behalf of Eastern Province Cricket,” May told Cricbuzz on Thursday. That was also his answer when he was asked to confirm his reported stance on Moroe and Nenzani. Pressed on the latter, he said, “I cannot comment as I was not on the board to make any appointments. I only recently got into the board.”

That much is true. May joined the gravy train that is CSA’s board, whose members could earn up to USD 27 250 a year, in February — not quite four months before his home ground, St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth, was named as one of the venues for the four Tests England’s men’s team will play in South Africa this southern summer. St George’s, the country’s oldest international venue, last hosted an England Test in 2004. Since then, crowds at Centurion, Newlands and the Wanderers, and even Kingsmead — which like Port Elizabeth struggles with low attendances — have seen the English in two Tests. As many as 12 000 Barmy Army members are expected to turn up this summer, and the Eastern Cape city’s depressed economy could do with a week of steadily pinkening Poms proffering pounds at pubs, pizza parlours, and places to stay.

But we cannot say for sure that May’s supposed change of heart about Moroe and Nenzani was the price he was willing to pay for the privilege of hosting cricket’s biggest regularly travelling circus, and he would hardly be willing to say it was. So, back to the original question. May has been Eastern Province president since March 2014, which means he has sat on CSA’s highest authority, the members council, which has the power to dissolve the board, for more than five years. Did he oppose, in his capacity as a senior administrator, the appointment of Thabang Moroe as CSA’s chief executive in July 2018 and the extension, this July, of Nenzani’s term as president? “Like I said, the board makes those appointments,” May said. We tried again. Did he, as a senior administrator entrusted with doing what’s best for cricket in his province, agree with those developments at the time? And had he changed his mind? “I unfortunately have to board a flight now.” Cricbuzz told him we expected an answer when next he was available. So far, we’ve not heard him, and there doesn’t seem to be much point pursuing a sorry excuse for an elected official who, having been asked a similar question four times, continues to hide from answering it.

There is no longer need to bother Madiseng for comment. He is the first non-independent member to ditch a board that has also lost three of its five independent directors. But there is no gaurantee we won’t see him again: putting as much daylight as possible between himself and the sinking ship would seem a canny move for someone who is thought to have designs on the CSA presidency. Like Arnie, he will no doubt be back. For now, though, Madiseng has left us food for thought. Among the reasons he gave Nenzani for resigning was “your press statement that was meant to have been presented on December 3, 2019”. Cricbuzz has been reliably informed that, last Tuesday, “Chris was to make the statement that Thabang Moroe was not acting on his own accord, as per the picture painted in the media, but that he was following instructions from the CSA board”. Hark: a smoking gun.

Four days later Moroe was suspended and that narrative was no longer useful to Nenzani, Williams and May, along with Zola Thamae, Tebogo Siko, Angelo Carolissen, Steve Cornelius and Marius Schoeman — the rest of this risible, miserable, execrable bunch of suits. To own up to their complicity in the calamity would have been dangerous to their survival, and was therefore unutterable. For CSA’s board, that’s all that matters — not the public, not the sponsors, not the players, and certainly not the game. It’s all about them. And they have the sickening audacity to call themselves custodians. Of what, exactly?

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.