JOHANNESBURG - Cricket South Africa’s current administrators and Board want to restructure the organisation, but based on the summary of the forensic report, released on Monday, a major question is: should they be allowed to do so?
Cricket SA’s administrative structure is fundamentally flawed in that half of the Members Council - the highest decision-making body in the organisation - also provides seven representatives on the 12 member board of directors. It is a structure that sets CSA’s administration against itself and is the result of the federation largely ignoring the recommendations made in 2012 by the Nicholson Commission of Inquiry.
When Cricket SA announced that it was postponing its Annual General Meeting at the end of August, one of the reasons for doing so was so that the organisation could re-look at how it could implement the recommendations of Nicholson, with the number of independent directors being a major bone of contention. Nicholson’s proposed 12-member board makes provision for nine independent directors. CSA currently has five.
Yet despite talking about instituting Nicholson before it can hold its AGM, Cricket SA last week advertised for independent directors to apply, but only made provision for four vacancies.
On Monday, while releasing a summary of Fundudzi Forensic Services CSA’s John Mogodi, Limpopo’s representative on the Members Council, who has become a de facto spokesman on the Council’s behalf regarding the report and the administrative restructuring CSA is attempting to undertake, outlined a roadmap that had been drafted by CSA’s lawyers Bowman GIlfillan for the Council to consider.
That road map contains eight recommendations, that include amending CSA’s Memorandum of Incorporation in order to “separate the Members Council and its workings from CSA,”ensure that the MOI and related governance processes lead to the appointment of a Board with a significant range of skills,” and that “an independent director (be appointed) as the Chairperson of the Board.”
Who will do all that? Cricket SA’s statement on Monday identified a “collaborative team with representation from Members’ Council and Board,” that is consulting with “external Legal Advisors.” That task team has provided 19 proposals in drafting that new MOI, which CSA hopes to have lodged with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission by October 23.
That it should be this current Members Council and the current Board which is carrying out this exercise is deeply worrying. While CSA officials in recent weeks have been blasé about the findings of the forensic report, even the summary, written by Bowmans, makes clear some horrendous failures in terms of Board oversight of the now axed CEO, Thabang Moroe.
How that board, so soon after the last administrative calamity involving the ‘bonus scandal’ 10 years ago can have so quickly forgotten about following proper corporate governance, is very concerning.
Most of them weren’t involved in that painful episode, but it should have front and centre of their minds in how they administered CSA. That this current crisis should occur so soon after that, and then end up demanding CSA actually do a better job of applying judge Chris Nicholson’s recommendations is a damning indictment of this current leadership, from the board, to individual officials like company secretary, Welsh Gwaza.
The current group simply can’t be trusted to conduct and authorise the necessary changes.
Cricket SA’s leadership will meet Tuesday with parliament’s portfolio committee for sport, art and culture and unlike Monday, when they refused to take questions from the media, they will have to answer for their actions and why they feel they are best placed to restructure Cricket SA and cleanse it from the mess that many of them created.
@shockerhess