Simphiwe Ndzundzu – Bulletproof Truth

One more tantrum, without feeling, by relics of CSA’s gladly gone age

“We can’t go back to what we had. It doesn’t treat the game well.” – Dean Elgar on the suits’ old order.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

CSA’s members council, which has proved itself a perennial impediment to the sound running of the game in South Africa, has been swept aside. True to its troubled history, it first tried to go out with a recalcitrant bang. In the end, all it could manage was a whimper of acquiescence.

Rihan Richards and Donovan May, relics of the council that caused a lot of the trouble, have hung on as CSA’s president and vice-president. But those titles are likely worth little more, in power terms, than the letterheads printed with their holders’ names — except as reminders of the suits’ inglorious past. Pertinently, their new roles do not put them on the board.

Across the equator and far away in St Lucia, Dean Elgar approved. “I hope there’s going to be a new dawn and a new era,” he told an online press conference on Thursday. “We can’t go back to what we had. It doesn’t treat the game well.

“When you are instated as a captain, whether you like it or not you’re always going to be involved with those kind of chats on the boardroom front. I’m not a boardroom specialist. I’m not a politician. I’m a cricket player and the Proteas captain, and that’s all I care about. “I’d like to say that I trust the new structure going forward. Cricket needs to be put first again. It was taking very much of a bad back seat in the past. Hopefully the new structure and the new board can get cricket back up and running where it should be.”

The board will in future be headed by its chair, who has yet to be named and cannot be Richards or May or any of the non-independent members. That’s part of the seismic shift that has changed the shape of high level cricket administration in South Africa.

The members council, which is comprised of the presidents of the 14 provinces and associates, agreed in August 2012 that CSA should be served by a majority independent board. It took until CSA’s annual meeting on Saturday — its first in 20 months — for the council to fulfil that commitment. Little wonder: previously, most of the seats on the board were reserved for council members.

Consequently cricket has suffered years of financial failings and governance scandals, which in November sparked government intervention that threatened the suspension of the country’s teams from international competition and the withdrawal of state funding unless CSA’s house was put in order. That prompted the resignation of the dysfunctional elected board, and the establishment of an interim structure. The interim board dragged the council, kicking and screaming all the way, and with sports minister Nathi Mthethwa looking on sternly, to Saturday’s meeting.

But the council had one last tantrum to throw. Despite having no authority to do so, it objected to the appointment of Norman Arendse — a former CSA president and lead independent director — as one of the eight independent directors. Asked during an online news conference on Saturday to provide reasons for that position, Richards at first refused. When pressed he said: “We must consider that advocate Arendse was the lead independent director during the period of the appointment of Thabang Moroe [as CSA’s chief executive in September 2017], as well the [stillborn Global League T20], and a number of other issues — specifically utterances with regard to CSA during the period he’s been off the board.”

The council’s bleating about “utterances” is easily batted away by the fact that Arendse — a fiery senior counsel — has criticised CSA’s catastrophes as an organisation. He has not taken aim, publicly, at individuals. Did Richards forget that he was also on the board that green-lit the GLT20 and appointed Moroe? Those decisions are connected in that Moroe’s predecessor, Haroon Lorgat, was hanged with what the board said were questionable practices in the way he was trying to organise the league. Once Lorgat was out of the way, Moroe — until then a council member himself and vice-president of the board — was installed as chief executive.

Somehow neither the members council nor the board heard the governance alarms that would have been rung by Moroe making that leap, which was instrumental in CSA crashing to its deepest crises. The chickens came home to roost in August last year, when Moroe was sacked for serious mismanagement. But the council was quick to protest, unsuccessfully, when Lorgat was named to the interim board.

Another example of the council’s fractured thinking was had on Saturday when it raised concerns that only one woman would be on the board: Muditambi Ravele, an experienced administrator who will serve as an independent member. But that followed the council having to choose between Simphiwe Ndzundzu, a man, and Anne Vilas, a woman, to fill one of the five seats it had been granted on the board — and opting for Ndzundzu.

Muhammad Seedat, the chair of the nominations committee given the authority to appoint the independent directors, paid the council the respect of considering their objection. But when the annual meeting resumed on Wednesday, Arendse was confirmed as an independent. Among the others is Andrew Hudson, the former Test opener and erstwhile convenor of the national selection panel.

Quite what the council hoped to achieve by delaying cricket’s progress from Saturday to Wednesday is a mystery. Maybe when much of what you’ve been doing for years has amounted to getting in the way of the game going forward, another few days doesn’t matter.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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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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The stink of South Africa’s cricket culture

“There are so many serious issues that confront our sport at the moment that it will take extraordinary measures to save it from total collapse.” – Solomon Pango, former CSA board member

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

ALL cricket teams have cultures. They just don’t talk about them. Because that involves thinking about their feelings. And cricketers, as we all know, don’t have feelings. Like fish.

So it’s been up to opponents to define teams’ cultures. Australia? Swaggering ball-tamperers who don’t always play as good a game as they talk. England? Chronic over-thinkers with a filthy habit of stealing players from other countries. India? Nouveau riche types who can’t imagine not being the most important people in the game.

South Africa? Crippled by under-achievement, particularly in the white-ball formats. As with the examples above, that analysis is bluntly simplistic. Why they tend not to perform to their potential is a question that could keep us talking for far longer than the four days South Africa’s men’s high performance squad — including most of the 16 nationally contracted players — spent in a culture camp in Skukuza last week.

The short answer is there is so much going on off the fields that South Africa’s teams play on that it is impossible for them to keep their eye on the ball as solidly as the opposition are, comparatively, free to do.

The past weeks have been a case in point, what with several former players alleging unfair and racist treatment in hysterical tones. Perhaps that’s what happens when people who have been hard done by and not been listened to for too long finally get their chance to speak. Perhaps they are not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Perhaps we’ll never know.

While that has lurched on and on, Cricket South Africa (CSA) have been a burning house falling off a cliff. First there was another slew of resignations. Then an increasingly heated skirmish on Twitter between Alviro Petersen and Omphile Ramela, the president of the South African Cricketers’ Association, about the 2015 fixing scandal, in which Petersen was one of seven players banned. Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, one of CSA’s independent directors, waded into the fray on Tuesday with: “I’m clear I serve a God of Mercy, even prison in SA is called a CORRECTIONAL services Not DESTRUCTION services. Even prison for worse criminals there is a parole. That’s my personal view.”

As chair of CSA’s transformation committee, Kula-Ameyaw has assumed for herself the loudest voice in matters of social justice. Yet she was appointed, in May, under the cloud of, as an Estate Agency Affairs Board official, allegedly misusing taxpayers’ money on a trip to Ghana in March 2018 that was worth R90,000, or USD7,600 at the prevailing exchange rate. The resultant disciplinary proceedings against her superior cost the equivalent of USD24,000.

It has emerged that one of the candidates for a position on CSA’s board at the annual meeting on September 5, Border provincial president Simphiwe Ndzundzu, is under investigation after being accused of breaking into a house and assaulting a man, his sister and his frail, elderly mother.

One of the four suits running for CSA president, Eastern Province’s Donovan May, was quoted as saying in December: “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.” And that even as sponsors were demanding the resignation of the entire board. Or for president Chris Nenzani and vice-president Beresford Williams to go. Nenzani finally got the message and quit on August 15. Williams? He’s running for president, of course.

A letter addressed to Williams — who is currently the acting president — his board, the presidents of the provincial affiliates and CSA’s acting chief executive, Kugandrie Govender, has called for next week’s elections to be cancelled and for an interim board to be put in place. It was written by Solomon Pango, once a board member. Among the listed supporters of the proposal were Ray Mali, a former ICC and CSA president.

“We are extremely concerned about the damage that is being done to cricket through the numerous issues that seem to plague our sport,” Pango wrote. “There are so many serious issues that confront our sport at the moment that it will take extraordinary measures to save it from total collapse.”

If there is a silver lining in these billowing dark clouds, it is the hope that the forensic investigation into CSA’s suspended chief executive, Thabang Moroe, exposes enough wrongdoing by him and his cronies to spark a revolution for good. But that chance is fast receding, what with, Cricbuzz has learnt, legal opinion having been brandished at a meeting on Monday preventing, for now, the members council — which has authority over the board — being given access to the report from the investigation.

Who needs a pandemic to tip the cricket industry over the edge when CSA are eminently capable of catastrophic self-harm? If you’re a player trying to make your way in this shambles what else could possibly be at the top of the agenda at a culture camp?

Of course, a release on Tuesday tried to paint a more positive picture: “The camp was aimed at bringing together players as well as the coaching and support staff of the national and high performance teams to align on objectives and plot the road ahead with a new cricket season not too far from beginning. After vigorous, open and honest conversations and consultation … the squad arrived at a 100% synergised approach.”

Values were identified as, “Belonging: The team needed to ensure it firmed up and left no room for misunderstanding in the inclusivity of its environment. It is a platform where everyone can be themselves and be an equal member within the team space”; “Empathy: Every team member must be able to freely share how they feel, and individuals must be willing to ‘take a walk in another member’s shoes’ and listen with the intention to understand and not respond”; and “Respect: Team members will respect themselves, they will have respect for others, for the environment and the badge. The Proteas are honoured to and responsible for representing the people of South Africa everywhere they go, both on and off the field.” The “rules of engagement” are that, “Every member of the team must be free to be themselves without fear of judgement. Everyone is of equal importance to the system.”

In an audio file, team manager Khomotso Volvo Masubelele said: “The camp demonstrated that regular conversations and prioritising the soft skills work is critical to the team as it for on-field strategies. The players have demonstrated the capacity to learn, to have hard conversations and how to prioritise and to listen to understand but not to respond.

“They have learned to move away from arguing their way through conversations to feeling their way in each conversation that they have by using concepts of storytelling, guided conversation and first-person narrative. And in that way we are able to move the conversation into fertile soil in which deep reflection and action can emerge.

“We went from addressing issues to engaging people, from contention to conversation, from moving against to moving with as a collective. And it highlighted the need for education. And showed us that it doesn’t matter at what level guys come into the environment, there is importance in touching base with everybody. Just to make sure the awareness is there in terms of what it means for them to be Proteas.

“And highlighting the importance to listen, understand and acknowledge. That brought us to a point where we can start looking into a performance model, that the teams feels that they are part of, they own, it resonates with them, a model that can outlive them and be there for future generations of Proteas.”

There was more where that came from, all of it good, considered and constructive. And none of it will mean a thing if the culture of CSA itself isn’t remade from scratch. Already South African cricket is blighted by racists, fixers and dishonest malcontents, and we don’t know how bad the stink will get. It’s the smell of a fish rotting from the head.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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