Failings of the CSA Board not terrible enough for them to step aside

Cricket South Africa’s Members Council, having studied a summary of the Fundudzi Forensic Report over the weekend, have decided that whatever the governance failings of the Board of Directors were, they are not terrible enough to warrant them stepping aside ahead of the AGM, which has to be held by November 5.

The 14-strong Members Council includes seven members of the Board, an awful structural defect which perhaps made stronger action impossible. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a strong desire for change in CSA’s governance structures and how the Board is constituted. The weekend bosberaad decided that CSA’s Memorandum of Incorporation is to be revised with special attention given to the composition and roles of the Members Council, the Board of Directors and executive management.

But it is the current Board who will be responsible for the implementation of these changes before the AGM.

“The summary of the forensic report was quite comprehensive and covered all the burning issues. Just the litigation-sensitive stuff was kept from us on the advice of legal counsel from Bowmans Gilfillan so as to protect the case they are building against the relevant people. But there was not much in there that should affect the appointment of directors. Not many of the responsible people remain on the Board.

“There are things that could have been done better and some decisions made by the Board were not great. But often they rely on senior management to feed them the information, you trust that information to be correct and then six months later when you discover that it is not, then it’s too late. But I can’t really see why it was kept from the public,” a Members Council delegate told The Citizen on Sunday night.

The Members Council will now have their meeting with Sascoc, who have called for the Board and executive management to stand aside and allow the independent task team they are appointing to conduct an investigation into the affairs of CSA, on Monday evening.

But the practicalities of who would actually be in charge of the operations side of CSA, as well as what is seen as “quite an aggressive overstep by Sascoc”, makes it unlikely that CSA will agree to the Sascoc demand for directors to step aside.

A date for the AGM, originally scheduled for September 5, has not been finalised, but the controversy over the nominations process for new directors was discussed. The process will now be overseen by an interim selection panel comprised of people from both within and outside the game.

The proposed changes to the MOI will all need to be ratified at the AGM.

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