There remain concerns about the role Cricket South Africa’s present board of directors will play in the selection of a future board and even a transitional entity to run the sport.
While Judge Chris Nicholson’s recommendations concerning the administrative future of the organisation are far reaching, the prospect of the current board still having a say in the identity of the new body has some worried that the directors who helped strengthen chief executive Gerald Majola’s hold on the organisation, will continue to plan for CSA’s future.
“From a moral or even legal perspective you can’t have any of the current people involved in any transitional measures or even in the set-up of the new board,” said Bernard Matheson, the legal advisor to Cricket SA’s former president Mtutuzeli Nyoka.
In his recommendations concerning the future of CSA, Nicholson states that CSA should create a new board of directors comprising 12 members – “nine non-executive directors, to be voted for by the affiliates, with each director being required to enjoy two thirds support from the total of affiliates.” The remaining three board members would be the CEO, the treasurer and secretary.
It is the line “voted for by the affiliates,” which worries Matheson, because it was those affiliates, through their representatives on the board, who backed the discredited Khan Commission’s “formal caution” of Majola in November 2010 and also supported the “severe reprimand” Majola incurred at a special meeting prior to last year’s AGM.
“The board can’t be involved in this current process; even the transitional measures, must consist of people who have had nothing to do with this matter,” Matheson added.
Strangely among the recommendations concerning transitional measures for CSA’s administration, Nicholson states a nomination committee should be established consisting of the “president and any other directors selected by the board” to select suitable candidates for the position of chairman and the independent directors. CSA’s current president is AK Khan, who presided over that 2010 commission which Nicholson’s committee found tried “to protect Majola” from an independent inquiry.
Matheson believes that as a transitional measure former Chief Justice Pius Langa should be installed as president. “He and I worked together on the Gauteng (Cricket board) matter, so the background in the sport is already there, it won’t take him long to get up to speed.” Langa headed up a fact finding commission into the administrative affairs of the GCB in 2010.
Senior CSA officials, who are set to hold a meeting later this week where they intend to call for Nicholson’s recommendations to be implemented, have already strongly intimated that they want Majola and Khan out.
Meanwhile, Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula will outline his views on the report next month. His spokesman Paena Galane said that Mbalula was still in talks with the presidency over the report, while he would hold talks with “key stakeholders” in CSA and the SA Sports Commission and Olympic Committee. Cricket South Africa are due to meet with Mbalula on April 9.