Welsh Gwaza – Bulletproof Truth

South Africa look to India, England after Australia snub

“No matter what we offered them I doubt we would have been able to get them over the line.” – Graeme Smith on Australia’s no-show.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

TWO out of three ain’t bad. Especially when they’re the bigger two of the big three. So if India and England are in your corner, who cares if Australia isn’t? That’s CSA’s view, as articulated by Graeme Smith on Wednesday.

The Australians were due to play three Tests in South Africa next month but pulled out because of concerns over Covid-19 — despite CSA promising to go above and beyond what they have done to keep other teams safe during the pandemic. CSA has lodged an official complaint against CA with the ICC, but the bigger picture would seem to overshadow that scenario. Besides, the edge has been taken off that setback by engagements with India that Smith said were nearing confirmation.

“Even if we don’t win [at the ICC] — I don’t think there’s any precedent for it — the message is loud and clear,” Smith, CSA’s director of cricket, said on commentary during Wednesday’s matches in the franchise T20 tournament at Kingsmead. “It’s important that the members get together and support each other and try and find ways to get as much done as we possibly can. That added to the disappointment of Australia. Everyone [else] we’ve worked with has had that mindset and understood that. My sense is that Australia didn’t, and that’s what let us down. No matter what we offered them I doubt we would have been able to get them over the line.”

Smith said CSA’s relationships with the BCCI and the ECB were on a better footing, even in the wake of England aborting their white-ball tour to South Africa in December with half their six games unplayed. The fact that Smith and Sourav Ganguly, now the president of the BCCI, played eight Tests against each other — two of them as opposing captains — between 2004 and 2008 had strengthened the bond between the countries’ boards.

“Myself and Sourav go a long way back, and we’ve had a number of conversations,” Smith said. “India in particular have been very supportive of us. Hopefully in the next cycle we’ll have a number of tours against India that are pretty close to being finalised, actually. [ECB chief executive] Tom Harrison and the ECB have been brilliant as well. Even the way Tom handled the situation from behind the scenes [in December] with England was good. Those matches have already been rescheduled [though not announced]. There’s been a joint resolution and an understanding of that.”

Not so with the Australians. As in his playing days, Smith wasn’t willing to let them off the hook: “Australia has been the one that’s stood out in terms of difficulties. We never found the same sense of working together that we did with the other two. So there’s things that need to be improved and we’ve got to ask some hard questions of them and challenge them. That’s important for world cricket.”

Smith is also fighting on the home front. CSA was in chaos when he arrived because of years of shoddy governance by a board led by former president Chris Nenzani and ruinous management under Thabang Moroe, who has since been fired as chief executive. Acting chief executive Kugandrie Govender and company secretary Welsh Gwaza have since been suspended pending disciplinary action.

“There’ve been a number of suspensions in the leadership of CSA so the workload has certainly increased,” Smith said. “We find ourselves doing jobs we weren’t employed to do. But we’re picking up the can and trying to get CSA moving in the right direction.

“When I got involved in December I didn’t think it could get any worse, and we’ve certainly found ourselves in more challenging spaces after that. We’ve ridden quite a big wave behind the scenes. Now the objective is to push forward and take us out of the dark position we’ve been in.”

Remaining in good standing with India and England will help CSA move towards a goal that couldn’t be achieved without them. Australia? Smith didn’t say so but it was difficult not to hear it in his tone: that bridge has burnt.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Glass half-full for Australia tour. For now …

“The virus is so changing that we cannot predict what will happen. If things suddenly take a turn for the worse and the experts say we can’t do it, we won’t be able to.” – Zak Yacoob, CSA’s interim board chair, on the chances of Australia’s tour going ahead.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

WEAR a mask. Maintain social distancing. Don’t drive drunk. South Africans have heard it all before. But not from a cricket administrator telling them how to do their bit to keep Australia’s tour on track despite the coronavirus pandemic.

England abandoned their white-ball tour in December with half their six matches unplayed because of positive tests within the squads’ bio-secure environment. But no cases of the virus were detected in the bubble before and during Sri Lanka’s two Tests in the country in December and January. Where did that leave the visit by the Australians, who are due to play three Tests in South Africa in April?

“I had a chat with the chair of CA [Earl Eddings] about a week ago, and we agreed that the tour is going to go ahead,” Zak Yacoob, who chairs CSA’s interim board, told an online press conference on Thursday. “We agreed that we are going to try and ensure that we are going to make sure our facilities are as good possible; as good as necessary. We agreed that we learn every day, but that is not on the basis that we did anything wrong when England was here, of course. Because you know that none of the England people were affected. That’s the bottom line.”

Two positive tests in the England camp were subsequently declared false. A common South African view of why that tour failed revolves around England listing as a condition of their agreement to play the series in South Africa that they be allowed to leave the squads’ shared hotel to play golf. CSA acquiesced, and the visitors embraced that privilege enthusiastically by taking to five different golf courses spread between 13 and 72 kilometres from their hotel on eight of the 24 days they were in the country. It seems the lesson landed firmly with CSA — all involved were confined to the hotel for the Sri Lanka series — and will influence arrangements for Australia’s tour.

“The learning in relation to this virus changes all the time, and as it changes things must change,” Yacoob said. “We agreed that as professionals neither [Eddings] nor I know anything about this. So we rely on professionals. We have doctors, virology experts, isolation experts, and so on, who lead us through this process. We have adopted the approach that as long as the experts on both sides, true professionals in relation to corona and health, agree that the facilities are fine, we go ahead on the basis that the facilities are fine. So far there is, between the chair of CA and myself, no doubt that the [tour] will go ahead.”

Pholetsi Moseki, CSA’s acting chief executive, was confident the venture would get the green light: “The details will be finalised and announced to the media in a week or so.”

But Yacoob’s assurance was necessarily conditional: “We have agreed, also, that the coronavirus is so changing that we cannot predict what will happen. So if things suddenly take a turn for the worse and the experts say we can’t do it, we won’t be able to. We have to pray that things don’t get so bad.”

Which is where cricketminded South Africans come in: “The cricket supporters in our country must know that when they’re complying with distance and masking and so on, they’re doing it not only in their own interests. They’re doing it in the interests of cricket. And if they don’t mask, don’t keep distance, and they don’t stop driving drunk, and all that sort of thing, each of them by their contribution to expanding the virus will be making some contribution to the stopping of cricket and a whole range of other things.”

Keeping international cricket going in the time of Covid-19 wasn’t CSA’s only ongoing challenge. “The most important thing for the interim board now is to go into the brass tacks of how to change the structure of CSA in order to ensure that it works better,” Yacoob said. The members council — comprised of provincial affiliate presidents — and not the board is CSA’s highest authority. To muddy the waters of authority still more, most of the seats on the board are reserved for members council suits.

“You cannot have two centres of power in one organisation,” Yacoob said. “Our preference at the moment is for the board to be the centre of power in relation to day-to-day operational matters. We should make absolutely certain that the majority of the members of the future board are independent.”

That would bring CSA into line with the recommendations of the Nicholson report, which the organisation has avoided implementing fully since 2012. But there was a catch, as Yacoob explained: “According to [CSA’s] memorandum of incorporation [MOI] as it currently is, only the members council can change [the MOI]. If the members council refuses to agree to the change there may be some trouble and things could take a longer time.”

The members council presided over the financial corruption in CSA’s professional arm in 2009 that led to the Nicholson investigation. The buck for the financial and governance calamities that have engulfed CSA since 2017 also stops with the members council. Even so, Yacoob expected it to do the right thing this time: “I have no doubt that the members council is not going to come to the negotiations with any ulterior purpose. I think they will come in genuinely and we will have a bona fide debate. But the complication is that an independent board does in a sense result in a reduction of the powers of the members council in some ways.”

The interim board was established in November with the help of Nathi Mthethwa, South Africa’s sports minister. Its term was to have expired on January 15 but has been extended by a month. Yacoob said the board might seek more time to complete its work. But, just as it was up to the members council to appoint the interim board — which it refused to do initially — so it will be the members council’s decision whether the structure survives beyond February 15. “If the members council does not approve the extension, unless something happens or the minister does something, or unless there is some agreement, out we go,” Yacoob said. “So we really are at the mercy of the members council and we don’t know what they are going to decide.”

As if that wasn’t enough to keep the interim board busy, it is being taken to court by Omphile Ramela for removing him from as a member. Xolani Vonya, who had been recused from the board, has been accepted back into the fold. Kugandrie Govender, CSA’s former acting chief executive, and Welsh Gwaza, the company secretary, have been suspended pending disciplinary hearings. And there’s a new domestic structure to consider. Where will the money to pay for it come from, and how will the consequent disappearance of more than a quarter of professional players’ contracts be handled?

If South Africa’s current lockdown restrictions didn’t prohibit the sale of alcohol, that might have been enough to drive the interim board to drink. Or just to drink: no drunk driving, remember.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Board removes Ramela, who refuses to go

“He believes that every word that comes out of his mouth is the biblical truth, and if anybody begins to disagree with a word he says you are greeted with a great deal of anger.” – Zak Yacoob on Omphile Ramela.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

CSA’s interim board has confirmed the removal of Omphile Ramela, one of its two recused members. But a defiant Ramela is adamant that he remains part of the board.

The episode is sure to add to the growing dismay internationally about the state of the administration of the game in South Africa, what with CSA’s acting chief executive and company secretary suspended and England abandoning their men’s white-ball tour over Covid fears. And that’s only since December 1.

“It was not an easy decision but the interim board had no other option but to do so,” a CSA release explaining Ramela’s fate said on Tuesday, adding that neither he nor his attorney had attended the meeting where the decision was taken, nor responded to notices about the meeting. “The board unanimously decided [with one abstention] that Mr. Omphile Ramela, having not appeared to give any reasons why he should not be removed, is removed as a director on the CSA interim board,” the release said.

Asked for comment, Ramela told Cricbuzz: “I am still very much a director and member of the CSA interim board. No authorised personnel nor structure has removed me from the board, so there is absolutely nothing to challenge about my directorship. Yes, some members of the interim board have attempted to hold the organisation hostage, including locking out some of us from board meetings. But these will soon be dealt with. I remain a director and am still continuing with my work.”

Ramela stepped down as president of the South African Cricketers’ Association to be part of the board, which was appointed on November 17 in the wake of the elected board — which had presided over more than three years of mismanagement — resigned in the face of mounting pressure, including from government.

But it seems Ramela and the interim board could not get on. His recusal along with that of Xolani Vonya was reported on Wednesday, and Zak Yacoob, the former constitutional court judge who chairs the board, laid into Ramela during on online press conference on Thursday: “He has been generally obstructive in relation to board matters, generally defending the indefensible, basically refusing to accept the majority. He seems to make a distinction between what is right and majority decisions, and if he feels that majority decisions are wrong that he can continue to fight about them for hours and hours.

“He does not have the discipline to accept majority decisions. He has been obstructive in relation to every difficult decision we have had to take, and it has been virtually impossible to deal with him. In a three-month period [the length of the board’s appointment], if meetings last for hours and hours, to deal with obstructive people who keep saying they don’t understand this and they don’t understand that when things are completely explained, then the board is not going to be able to finish its work. We judged that the chance of finishing our work was lessened considerably by these obstructive tactics. I suspect that the obstructive tactics have been specifically designed to hold up the board, so that we can do very little in the three months.

“We spent two hours talking about whether he would accept majority rule. He says that when he says things are right, they are right. And therefore everyone must listen to him. He’s a young man. He believes that every word that comes out of his mouth is the biblical truth, and if anybody begins to disagree with a word he says you are greeted with a great deal of anger.”

Vonya was recused on the strength of serious allegations made against him by Easterns Cricket, the CSA provincial affiliate of which he was president before joining the board. Easterns suspended him in May. He was reinstated pending an investigation and resigned in October. He is believed to be seeking legal advice over the action taken against him by the interim board.

Among the seven remaining board members, only André Odendaal and Haroon Lorgat, former chief executives of the Western Province Cricket Association and CSA, have track records as cricket administrators. Asked if Ramela and Vonya would be replaced, Yacoob said: “We’ll try and agree replacements with the members council {nominally CSA’s highest authority]. If we don’t, the seven of us will simply carry on. We are not going to waste our time with side issues.”

Cricket can ill afford such unseemly squabbling, especially the day after the announcement that Kugandrie Govender had been suspended as CSA acting chief executive and chief commercial officer. That followed England going home on Thursday because of positive tests for the virus with half their six matches unplayed, which was preceded by the suspension of CSA company secretary Welsh Gwaza on December 1.

Individually, some of those developments will be seen as positive. Collectively, they paint a picture of chaos. Neither the public, the sponsors nor sports minister Nathi Mthethwa — whose intervention led to the interim board’s appointment — will want that. But it seems things have to get worse before there can be hope for improvement. How much worse is a question no-one has dared ask.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Govender gone in CSA cleanout

“The role she played in the revocation of media accreditation of certain journalists in December 2019.” – the first charge listed by CSA’s interim board against Kugandrie Govender, the suspended acting chief executive.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

CSA announced its third acting chief executive in just more than a year on Monday when Pholetsi Moseki was installed following the suspension of Kugandrie Govender on allegations of misconduct. Govender’s disciplinary hearing has been set for January 28.

She is the second major CSA figure, after company secretary Welsh Gwaza, to be removed by an interim board that was appointed on November 17 following intervention from government in reaction to more than three years of maladministration in the game.

The board recused two of its own members on Thursday, leaving little doubt that it is taking seriously its mandate to root out the rot that has brought cricket in South Africa to its knees financially and in governance terms. But the board will have to keep in mind its responsibility to maintain stability at CSA, which has suffered umpteen blows to its credibility since Thabang Moroe was appointed acting chief executive in September 2017.

Govender joined CSA as chief commercial officer in April 2019 and became its first female acting chief executive on August 19 this year after Jacques Faul relinquished the position. Faul came on board in the wake of Moroe’s suspension as the appointed chief executive in December.

A release from the interim board summarised the charges against Govender as “the role she played in the revocation of media accreditation of certain journalists in December 2019”, “various breaches of the provisions of the Companies Act as a prescribed officer of CSA”, and “the role which she played in the dismissal of Mr Clive Eksteen, which CSA has now acknowledged (in terms of a settlement agreement with Mr Eksteen) was an unfair dismissal”.

Govender’s Linkedin entry says that, as chief commercial officer, she was “responsible for all commercial matters; oversight of all CSA communications and media, sponsor services, digital media and marketing”. So the buck for five cricket journalists having their accreditation revoked without explanation could be said to stop with her. The decision to act against the journalists was part of the justification used to fire Moroe in August.

In October Govender told a meeting that involved South Africa’s players that she thought the flood of negative reporting on CSA was related to the organisation having lessened the freebies it gives journalists, and that reporters may be bitter about not securing jobs at CSA.

Govender came to CSA after a career of more than 21 years as a sales and marketing executive, largely in the media industry. Asked if she would contest the charges at her hearing, she did not respond.

Eksteen was suspended as CSA’s sponsorship and sales head in October last year over allegations that he was partly responsible for a delayed payment to the players, via the South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA) for the use of their image rights to promote the Mzansi Super League. An investigation found Moroe and Naasei Appiah, who was fired as chief operating officer on August 16, were to blame and that Eksteen was, in fact, trying to resolve the situation. SACA concurred. CSA also accused Eksteen of selling a sponsorship for less than its executive had approved. He countered that he had informed his superior, Govender, of the offer before it had been accepted. On June 14 Eksteen was found guilty of “transgressions of a serious nature” and fired. He sued for unfair dismissal, and won his case on December 4.

Moseki, an accountant who has worked in the banking, weapons and private equity industries, has been CSA’s chief commercial officer since July 2019. He will not be expected to shoulder his new responsibilities without help. “In ensuring that CSA remains fully functional during this time, the interim board has arranged for the appointment of a capable person from an auditing firm to stand in the breach until early January 2021,” Monday’s release said.

While that will reassure cricketminded South Africans that at least one sensible pair of ears and eyes will be among the more expensive suits at CSA, it also means the board thinks cricket administration in South Africa has run out of that vital quality.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Going, going, Gwaza …

The Fundudzi forensic report mentions Welsh Gwaza 254 times in its 457 pages.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

WELSH Gwaza, the Machiavellian figure thought to be behind much of what has gone awry at CSA, has been suspended. The company secretary has been ordered to appear at a disciplinary hearing on December 14, where he could face dismissal.

Gwaza’s suspension on full pay “regarding various allegations of misconduct against him” by CSA’s interim board was confirmed in a release on Tuesday. The charges against him were not specified, but action was taken because of the board’s “investigation emanating from the Fundudzi report into allegations of poor corporate governance and maladministration within CSA”.

The forensic report resulting from the Fundudzi probe mentions Gwaza 254 times in its 457 pages. No-one except Thabang Moroe, who features 681 times, and Naasei Appiah, who is named 296 times, appears more frequently. Moroe and Appiah have been fired as CSA’s chief executive and chief operating officer.

Gwaza sat on every significant CSA committee. He was a Moroe ally, and sources have told Cricbuzz he fought against the mass resignation of the elected board last month and against CSA’s members council agreeing to appoint the interim board. He lost both of those battles. Now it seems he is danger of losing his job.

The members council said on November 17 it would recognise the interim board, which was comprised with the help of the sports ministry. With that went Gwaza’s grip on CSA.

Chantel Moon, CSA’s human resources consultant, has also been removed. Along with finding fault with Moon’s company’s appointment by Moroe, the release said the “Fundudzi report has also revealed that Ms Moon lacks CSA’s minimum qualification”. The investigation found the same to be true of Moroe. A public relations firm CSA engaged has also been shown the door by the interim board.

The release said the board had made its decisions “after serious consideration and debate during which differences of opinion were aired”. Doubtless there will be more of the same. No-one can say it is not taking seriously its mandate of “restoring confidence in CSA and its structures”. More heads could roll in the coming days, Cricbuzz has learnt.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Fundudzi report lays bare CSA’s dysfunction

Between them, Thabang Moroe and Naasei Appiah accounted for 83% of CSA’s spending on alcohol.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

CSA’s interim board earned its first major victory over the organisation’s culture of secrecy and control on Wednesday when all 457 pages of the Fundudzi forensic report were made public. The document was used to fire Thabang Moroe as chief executive, and could lead to disciplinary action being taken against others.

The members council, nominally CSA’s highest authority, had previously tightly restricted access to the report. It at first balked at allowing parliament to see it and demanded non-disclosure agreements from the few who did, citing fears of legal action.

“The board is alive to the fact that some individuals and organisations have concerns that they have been mentioned or implicated in the report, that some individuals have not being heard and that the report does not necessarily paint a full picture,” a release on Wednesday said. “The board has nevertheless concluded that it is overwhelmingly in the public interest and in the interest of CSA to release the report at this time.

“All stakeholders will be given a fair opportunity to convey their views. In addition, no action will be taken against any person implicated without a full investigation, fair procedures, and in particular everyone being given the opportunity to be heard.”

A 46-page summary of the report, prepared by CSA’s own lawyers, was released on October 5. It mentioned Moroe 71 times. The full version features him 681 times. In many of those instances, not in a good way.

The view of the process that led to his appointment on July 16, 2018 — after CSA had received applications from 35 candidates, of which it shortlisted eight and interviewed four — is withering: “When compared to other shortlisted candidates, Moroe lacked the minimum tertiary qualification. Moroe did not have a minimum of eight years executive management experience in business, cricket or commercial entity [as required for the position]. CSA’s board was aware or ought to have been aware that Moroe did not meet the minimum qualification for the position of CSA chief executive.”

Many calamities later, Moroe was suspended on December 6, 2019. “In his letter of suspension, CSA chairman and president of the members council, Chris Nenzani, indicated that the charges largely related to the revocation of media accreditation as well as lack of oversight and related matters,” the report says. That followed severe deterioration in CSA’s relationships with the players and the sponsors, and the projection that it could lose up to USD65.5-million by the end of the 2022 rights cycle. Five journalists who reported critically and consistently on cricket’s sorry state of affairs — including me, in the interests of full disclosure — had their accreditation revoked “on Moroe’s instruction” on November 25 last year. The resultant outcry from the public, sponsors and the South African National Editors’ Forum prompted Moroe’s suspension. He was fired on August 27 this year.

Welsh Gwaza, CSA’s company secretary and the most powerful person in cricket — perhaps excluding the interim board — features in the summary report a scant four times. He doesn’t get off that likely in the unabridged edition, which names him in 254 places. His fingerprints are all over CSA’s disastrous decision to put the Western Province Cricket Association under administration in February last year — which was overturned in court, with costs — and, according to the report, he spends a lot of time and effort thinking up ways to set lawyers on journalists. Oddly, then, he “does not recall a specific discussion around the revocation of media accreditation”.

There’s more, so much more. Including that “CSA has been issuing credit cards to staff for years without there being a policy that provides guidance on the use of the credit card”. CSA cards were used to “pay for alcohol during business functions” in 27 transactions from August 19, 2016 to August 24, 2019. The equivalent of USD20,856 was spent, USD6,081 of it by Moroe on six different occasions. But the champion booze buyer was Naasei Appiah, who was fired as chief operating officer on August 16. He signed 13 times for a total of USD11,226, including the biggest single amount: USD3,080 at a champagne bar in Cape Town on November 26, 2018. Between them, Moroe and Appiah accounted for 83% of CSA’s alcohol expenditure during the four years under review.

We will have to stop there, not least to give the report the attention it deserves. But the lid is off, the lights are finally on, the toothpaste is out of the tube. Watch this space.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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10 days that could shake SA cricket’s world

The only stakeholder in South African cricket that wants the members council to stay on is the members council itself.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

ENGLAND should make sure to check the forecast before they board their charter flight on Monday for a men’s white-ball series in South Africa. Not the weather report: the political prognosis for what is suddenly the home side’s most anticipated engagement since the end of isolation in 1991.

The World Cup holders remain on course to play three matches in each format at Newlands and in Paarl from November 27. Team management told Cricbuzz on Sunday they were, at this stage, proceeding as planned. But the trip could be wasted if CSA’s members council continues to refuse to recognise an interim board proposed by government in the wake of CSA’s chronic failure to manage its affairs.

Multiple governance crises and dwindling finances have plagued the game for more than three years, prompting Nathi Mthethwa, the minister of sport, to intervene. But the members council, CSA’s highest authority, is digging in its heels.

The interim board says the members council led it to believe the new structure would be recognised. But, on Wednesday, the members council wrote to Mthethwa to say it would not appoint the board. The members council met on Friday, and pivoted to say it would reconsider its position if Haroon Lorgat was removed from the board over perceived conflicts of interests arising from his tenure as CSA chief executive.

And that despite the fact that, earlier on Friday, the leader of the interim board, former Constitutional Court judge Zak Yacoob, rubbished the idea that Lorgat was too conflicted to serve on the interim board. Lorgat had offered to resign and was persuaded to stay on by the board.

The members council and the interim board were due to meet on Sunday, with the members council set to have its own meeting in the evening. If the interim board still isn’t appointed — on Friday there were only three votes in favour of doing so — Mthethwa may lose patience with CSA’s stalling tactics and take control of the game, which he is empowered to do by law. That could spell the withdrawal of CSA’s privilege of calling its teams national representatives, meaning the matches against England would not be considered official internationals. If, indeed, they are played under those conditions: England would likely balk at the idea of friendlies. Aborting the tour would cost CSA USD4.2-million in broadcast revenue.

What with England due to go into a bio-secure bubble at a Cape Town hotel for 10 days, there is time for that scenario to develop. Or for enough pressure to mount on the members council to force it to do what many consider the right thing.

Mthethwa has shown patience, not least because the members council is elected by CSA’s provincial affiliates. Removing it would raise questions about government’s respect for the democratic process and could be resisted in the courts. The counter argument is that the members council has made an unmitigated mess of stopping the buck and should be taken out of the equation before it causes or ignores more harm than the game has already suffered under its watch.

The only stakeholder in South African cricket that wants the members council to stay on is the members council itself. And powerful figures in CSA’s executive management, particularly company secretary Welsh Gwaza, who have the ear of the members council.

The 10 days of England’s quarantine could shake South African cricket’s world. What will be left standing? Perhaps nothing, but that would be better than the wreck it is now.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Précis of CSA’s forensic report summary: Moroe, Moroe, Moroe (and others)

Did Thabang Moroe, like Lee Harvey Oswald, Rasputin and the Loch Ness monster, act alone? Not quite.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

THE butler didn’t do it. The chief executive did. Not with a candlestick in the library, but with bumbling, badness and booze. Even a casual reading of the summary of the report of a forensic investigation into CSA’s myriad problems pins almost everything that has gone wrong in the game in South Africa since 2016 on Thabang Moroe, who was fired as CEO on August 27.

The unabridged forensic report was used to sack Moroe. Few beyond CSA’s highest authority — the members council — have seen it. CSA released the summary of the report, prepared by its own lawyers, on Monday. It runs to 46 pages and close on 11,000 words — in which Moroe features 71 times, invariably in a poor light. He is challenging his dismissal in court. Asked to comment on the allegations made against their client in the summary and on CSA’s decision to release the document, Moroe’s lawyers have not responded.

The summary damns Moroe for revoking journalists’ accreditation, for all but destroying the suits’ relationship with the players, for not keeping the board properly informed about action taken against provincial affiliates, and for dodgy appointments of rights partners, service providers and staff. And for losing money and spending too much, including on alcohol. Consequently, the summary says, Moroe broke the Companies Act numerous times, brought CSA into disrepute and failed to act in its best interests.

So, like Lee Harvey Oswald, Rasputin and the Loch Ness monster, Moroe acted alone? Is he solely responsible for CSA’s myriad ills? Not quite. Beresford Williams, CSA’s acting president, and Iqbal Khan, one of six board members who have resigned since December, are accused of breaking the Companies Act in potential conflicts of interest. Welsh Gwaza, the company secretary and widely acknowledged as CSA’s chief power broker, could be in trouble for failing to keep the board in the loop on key matters. The board itself “appears to be [in] dereliction of their fiduciary duties”, the summary says.

Little wonder, perhaps, that CSA is fighting the ever louder calls for the release of the full report — which was commissioned by and is owned by the members council, and thus is not a public document. CSA has said it has kept the full findings and the recommendations hidden because of legal considerations, but it is difficult to understand how custodians who really do have the game’s welfare at heart — and not their own interests — cannot see why making the entire report available is the only course of action that has integrity. But integrity is a slippery concept in an organisation in which, at full strength, seven of the 12 board directors also sit on the 14-person members council. Who’s guarding the guards? The guards.

Monday’s release of the summary follows a meeting between the members council and Nathi Mthethwa, the minister of sport, on Friday and precedes CSA’s scheduled appearance before a parliamentary committee on Tuesday. The latter promises to be as bruising as the former for a game that, in the wake of South African cricket’s Black Lives Matter explosion, finds itself in the crosshairs of a government desperate to use the moment to create distraction from more pressing issues, like its shambolic handling of Covid-19.

That comes in the wake of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) being directed by Mthethwa to intervene in CSA’s affairs, CSA’s rejection of SASCOC’s demand for unfettered access to the comprehensive forensic investigation’s findings, which it says it would need in order to do Mthethwa’s bidding, and SASCOC reporting back to Mthethwa that, without financial help from government to force CSA to comply, it is unable to follow his orders. At Friday’s meeting, Mthethwa reportedly told CSA it has until Tuesday to give SASCOC what it wants. Whether CSA’s peace offering of the summary will be enough to placate SASCOC, and therefore Mthethwa, remains to be seen.

To be fair to CSA, what it has put out there makes quite some reading. The report, the summary says, identified 24 “areas of concern”. Tellingly, “structure of the board” is only 13th on the list of 20 such areas detailed on Monday, with “organisational design” at No. 16. Those considerations should be uppermost in a probe launched to “conduct an investigation into various governance issues and allegations relating to possible failure of controls and insufficient executive oversight within CSA dating back to a period of [48] months (2016 to 2019)”.

Plenty of such instances were found, although a representative for the members council, John Mogodi, said during on online press conference on Monday: “While we are not claiming the report to be inaccurate it is important to understand that [investigating firm] Fundudzi’s forensic analysis is a single-sided report, and not all of the individuals or parties mentioned have had the opportunity to provide responses to the findings as yet.”

Mogodi read a prepared statement, then disappeared from view without taking questions. And that despite having just said that, “In the interest of cricket and to mend relationships, CSA’s members council unanimously agreed to make the summary forensic report available to all … interested stakeholders, including members of the media.” Good luck mending relationships with the media by not sticking around for questions, which reporters were invited to send separately.

Maybe Mogodi wasn’t keen to talk about people other than Moroe. He spoke of CSA paying “service provider x” the equivalent of USD211,607 for services that were never received. CSA’s acceptance of a rights settlement fee for the 2019 Mzansi Super League caused losses of USD750,897. Not forgetting the USD3,931 Moroe spent on alcohol on his CSA credit card.

CSA’s former chief operating officer, Naasei Appiah, was also implicated. The summary paints him and Moroe as partners in wrongdoing — for instance, Appiah’s alcohol bill over four years was USD12,182 — which might explain why he was fired on August 16. But, unlike Moroe, Appiah was sacked after he had won an appeal against his suspension. That happened not least because several of the charges against him fell away. One example was the fact that CSA do not have a formal policy on credit card use. So who was to say how much could be spent on drink? Bizarrely, CSA insisted Appiah appeal again. When he refused to challenge a decision that had gone in his favour, he was dismissed. Now what?

“This [summary] report would have cleared me a lot quicker than the process I had to go through,” Appiah told Cricbuzz on Monday. “I’ll continue fighting my dismissal. If me and CSA are to part ways it should be a lot more honourable than this.”

Honour? That’s the code followed by butlers, not their employers.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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Will money buy justice for cricket’s victims of racism?

Parsing fact from fiction will be CSA’s challenge in their efforts to dispense social justice.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

CRICKET South Africa (CSA) could spend more than a million dollars on reparations to former black and brown players who say their careers were blighted by racism. Although the amount has yet to be agreed it promises to be substantial as the organisation tries to buy some peace in the wake of weeks of race ructions. But those who benefit could face accusations of profiting from the pain of the past — even if they were victims of injustice. And it’s not as if CSA are awash with cash.

Cricbuzz has learnt that independent board member Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, who is driving the initiative as part of CSA’s Social Justice and Nation Building project, has demanded between R20-million and R22-million in funding for the project — the equivalent of between USD1.143-million and USD1.262-million. Nothing has been agreed, but cynics will wonder whether the bandying about of those kinds of figures is fuelling the stream of black and brown former players telling their stories of racist treatment.

In an interview on state television on July 17, Makhaya Ntini said he was socially shunned by his teammates during his international career. On July 23 the Eastern Cape provincial government pledged support to pledged their support to help Ntini relaunch his academy in Mdantsane.

Hardly a day passes without a former player recounting their hardships, often on state media. Thami Tsolekile has appeared three times on one radio show, which is also due to host Lonwabo Tsotsobe and Alviro Petersen. Often the aggrieved players’ white contemporaries come in for criticism, most often Graeme Smith, now CSA’s director of cricket, who has professed his lack of awareness of racism in South Africa’s team environment during his tenure as captain from 2003 to 2014.

“We can’t have him in the system if he’s not going to tell the truth,” Tsolekile said, in his latest appearance on Thursday. Is Tsolekile following his own dictum? Almost always an understudy in South Africa’s squad, he has recently slammed the limited playing opportunities he was given in an international career that amounted to three Tests. Undoubtedly, he deserved more. But in an interview he gave to a South African newspaper in Brisbane in November 2012, Tsolekile was quoted as saying: “I’ve had long talks with [coach] Gary Kirsten in England and here in Australia and he made it clear to me where I stand, and I’m very comfortable with that. I see no reason to change things.” That was in response to Ntini telling another newspaper at the time: “Tsolekile would have been playing if he was white. People will say we are talking politics but we need to say these things.” Tsolekile said then he found Ntini’s assertion “quite disturbing” and that, “For me, I wouldn’t know why he said that; perhaps he has his own reasons.”

Almost eight years on, parsing fact from fiction has only become exponentially more difficult. So quite how CSA are going to decide who is deserving and of how much money is part of the challenge they will face in their efforts to mete out appropriate social justice. That will not be made easier by finances that were in a parlous state even before the coronavirus pandemic. But they are under pressure to address the issue, and have resolved to appoint a transformation ombudsperson by the end of this month.

“We many not have the money at this stage but we have not yet quantified the cost,” Chris Nenzani said in an interview on state radio on July 30, when he was still CSA’s president. “We are busy drafting the terms of reference. We are busy going through a process of saying what resources are we going to need, and how do we then ensure that we can afford these resources.

“The issue may not necessarily be money. Restorative justice does not necessarily mean that you are going to pay somebody something. But there has to be a sense that a person’s dignity has been restored, and that the system is acting in a way that ensures it does not go back to the unfortunate past. Whether that [restorative action] will be monetary or otherwise is going to be determined by the outcome of the process.”

Nenzani resigned on Saturday, ending a tenure of more than seven years in which transformation has been a constant and thorny presence. Not that it has ever been anything else. A former selector tells of the original squad for the 2003 Test series in England taking seven hours to pick, and then being rejected by CSA because it was too white. Instead of the committee being given the chance to reconvene to consider other options, the squad was amended by the suits without the selectors’ input.

For every such tale there are many others of black and brown players getting the short end of the stick. The outpouring of hurt has intensified since July 6, when Lungi Ngidi voiced his support for Black Lives Matter and said he hoped the conversation would be taken up in South Africa’s dressingroom.

He need have no doubt that the discussion is booming in CSA’s committee rooms, albeit online. Kula-Ameyaw has been part of the board only since May, but she arrived as a vocal proponent of black African transformation — she chairs the transformation committee — and is known to have formed an alliance with Welsh Gwaza, the all-powerful company secretary.

CSA will need careful management to come through this phase of their chronically troubled history without inflicting further reputational damage on themselves. They are being beseeched to do the right thing by around half-a-dozen different pressure groups, some of whom represent current and potential conflicting interests.

One such hastily formed collective, which claims that whites represent 60% of crowds at matches in South Africa, has threatened a boycott if CSA do not scrap racially-based selection policies. Whatever thunder they think they have will be stolen if Covid-19 keeps spectators out of grounds in the coming summer. That’s assuming lockdown regulations are relaxed enough to allow foreign teams to tour, which is not the case currently.

The 36 black and brown coaches and former players who issued a joint statement on July 14 supporting Ngidi and criticising white players like Pat Symcox and Boeta Dippenaar, among others, who came out against the fast bowler’s position, has splintered.

More division might follow. A growing number of brown South Africans feel CSA’s targets — six black or brown players in every South Africa XI, two of them black, and six in every franchise XI, three of them black — are unfair on them. For now they are happy to fight the good fight alongside their black comrades, but factionalism is a distinct possibility.

Because there is only so much space in the spotlight, only so much appetite for another saga of sadness, however genuine, and only so much money CSA will pay.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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CSA’s credibility crumbles further with Faul’s exit

“Chris Nenzani’s resignation in no way absolves him from any wrongdoing.” – you know you’re in trouble when minnows like the Democratic Alliance bully you.

TELFORD VICE | Cape Town

MONDAY went from bad to bizarre for Cricket South Africa (CSA) when, hours after they announced president Chris Nenzani’s resignation, acting chief executive Jacques Faul also walked away.

Life for those still attached to the ailing organisation could get yet more complicated, what with the country’s official opposition demanding sweeping action — including the resignation of the entire board — ahead of CSA’s appearance in front of parliament’s portfolio committee on sport, art and culture on Friday.

A safe pair of hands who guided CSA through another crisis in 2012 and 2013, Faul was appointed in December in the wake of the suspension of Thabang Moroe on allegations of misconduct. Who his replacement might be was not clear on Monday, but CSA company secretary Welsh Gwaza and chief commercial officer Kugandrie Govender would seem to be the prime candidates.

Faul confirmed his decision to Cricbuzz, but was not free to say more: Monday was his wife’s birthday. He said last month he would leave CSA on September 15 and return to his permanent position as chief executive of the Titans. Even so, his dramatic exit on Monday in the throes of a stormy board meeting will rock a game still reeling from Nenzani’s exit. Nenzani’s days, too were numbered — his tenure was due to end at the annual meeting on September 5.

But the twin shocks will only add to the pressure on CSA to pull out of the spiral of disaster they have been in since Moroe’s suspension, which followed more than two years of increasingly alarming decision-making under his authority.

All of which will add to the intensity of the focus on Friday’s parliamentary meeting. On Monday, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) issued a statement by shadow minister Tsepo Mhlongo, who wrote, “While the DA welcomes the resignation of … Nenzani, his resignation in no way absolves him from any wrongdoing.”

Mhlongo demanded Nenzani’s attendance at Friday’s meeting, and that vice-president Beresford Williams, who has been named acting president, and the rest of the board also resign.

Although they are the official opposition, the DA are small fry who hold only 84 of the 400 available seats in a parliament dominated by the African National Congress (ANC), who have 230 seats. But, at CSA’s last appearance in front of the committee in June, Nenzani angered the sports minister, the ANC’s Nathi Mthethwa, in a discussion about transformation. “I felt insulted with your intervention when you said you only take people on merit‚” Mthethwa told Nenzani.

In South Africa, if you earn the disapproval of a ruling party who have failed on every front and remain in power after 26 years only because of an utterly miserable cast of alternatives and voters’ tragically misguided loyalty, you must be getting a lot wrong. Faul’s resignation is only the latest evidence that CSA are deep in the abyss.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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