Ministry commits to ‘next step’ of finalising interim CSA board

The Department of Sport, through minister Nathi Mthethwa,  is pushing forward with plans to help form an interim board for Cricket South Africa (CSA) after this week’s mass resignations.

The entire CSA board has now stepped down with the exception of Zola Thamae, John Mogodi and Donovan May, who will stay on temporarily to facilitate a handover to the new interim board that is expected to operate until at least CSA’s AGM, understood to be in December.

Mthethwa has been active on attempting to clean up CSA’s administrative crisis for over a month now ever since The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) first became involved. Mthethwa has made it clear that he has not been satisfied with the leadership at CSA and it was one of his expectations that the entire board be removed, which has now happened.

The sports minister had also expressed his intentions to intervene in the running of CSA and had given the organisation a deadline of until the close of business on Tuesday, October 27 to make written submissions as to why that should not happen.

In a statement released on Wednesday morning, the Department of Sport confirmed that Mthethwa had received such communication from CSA and that he had engaged in a meeting for most of the day with the South African Cricketers’ Association (Saca) and Sascoc.

“The meetings with Sascoc and Saca were intended to share the outcomes of the meeting with CSA for the purpose of keeping key role-players abreast of the latest developments,” a statement read.

“The meeting with the Members Council of CSA was constructive and the Minister expressed his appreciation of their leadership.

“The next step is to finalise details of an interim board and conclude on a list of names thereof. Further details will be announced by the end of this week.”

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