JOHANNESBURG - Cricket South Africa's national selection convenor, Victor Mpitsang has been told to immediately revert to the previous transformation target policy when picking the national side.
That means 56% black player representation over the course of a season, with 18% representivity for black African players. The decision to suspend the transformation targets given to the government earlier this year followed a call from the interim board, chaired by former constitutional court justice Zak Yacoob, to CSA's acting chief executive, Kugandrie Govender on Thursday evening.
Earlier this year, one of CSA’s former independent directors, Dr Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw presented Sports Minister Nathi Mthethwa with revised figures for the national team’s targets.
In Kula-Ameyaw’s revised figures, black player representivity for 2020/21 sits at 58%, with black African representation at 25%. The South African men’s team in the recently completed T20 International series with England, missed those targets.
For the senior men’s and women’s teams the percentage targets increase incrementally over the next few years, with both teams set to have 63% black representation in the 2022/23 season and 33% black African representation.
However, that decision by the previous board, like all of its decisions, is subject to review by the interim board, in terms of the mandate handed to it, by Mthethwa when Yacoob's board was appointed at the end of October.
“It is a policy decision, so it needs to come to (the interim) board,” said interim board member, Judith February on Thursday. “We will be exercising our minds on it, we just haven’t got there yet. It will be put on the agenda for the next board meeting.”
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Questions were asked internally at CSA about how the new figures were arrived at, and what data informed those final statistics given to Mthethwa.
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The confusion around the transformation policy comes amidst scrutiny the national men’s team has faced over their decision not to kneel as a show of support for the Black Lives Matter social movement.
In a statement released by the players before the start of the T20 series with England, they state that instead of kneeling they would “continue to work together in our personal, team and public spaces to dismantle racism.” The decision they added was taken collectively “after deep dialogue and attentive consideration.”
That decision has not gone down well with broad swathes of public, with Boucher, who first mentioned before the players’ statement, coming in for severe criticism on social media.