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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