Cricket board all shook up

The death knell sounded for the Cricket South Africa (CSA) board yesterday with the resignation of five non-independent directors and the move to appoint a board with much better practitioners of corporate governance can now gain pace, according to a members council insider.

The resignations of acting president Beresford Williams and fellow directors Angelo Carolissen (Boland), Donovan May (Eastern Province), John Mogodi (Limpopo) and Tebogo Siko (Northerns), have left the board with just one non-independent director in Zola Thamae and three independents – Dr Eugenia Kula-Ameyaw, Marius Schoeman and Vuyokazi Memani-Sedile. But they are expected to also stand down before tomorrow’s deadline set for CSA by Sports Minister Nathi Mthethwa, opening the way for an interim board to be appointed, which will complete the adjustments to the memorandum of incorporation that will change the composition of the board.

The major changes will see a majority of independent and non-independent directors no longer also having a seat on the members council, as per the recommendations of the Nicholson Commission of Inquiry in 2012.

“Not all of the directors were happy to go, but they were basically told they had to; we forced them,” the members council insider said yesterday.

“We will now wait for the independents to resign, and if they don’t do that we will deal with them quickly.

“An interim board will then be set up and we will take a suggestion as to how that should happen to the sports minister tomorrow. “And Sascoc (The SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee) will assist us with that.

“There may be one or two current members of the members council on that interim board.

“But we have decided that nobody who was in office in the four years between 2016 and December 2019 will be eligible.”

It seems Anne Vilas of Central Gauteng cricket and KZN president Ben Dladla, two of the stars in the members council’s efforts to flex their muscle against the board, could be involved in the interim board as they have only recently been elected.

There are some doubts, however, that the interim board will be able to get the new memorandum of incorporation formalised before the annual general meeting on 5 December, possibly delaying elections for the permanent new board.

There have been some far from stellar appointments in the past few years.

The independent directors have largely failed to intervene in the governance scandals that have plagued CSA, and in some instances have actually made them worse.

– news@citizen.co.za

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