Ashwin meeting to determine if court on cards
A MEETING today between Ashwin Willemse and the management of SuperSport and MultiChoice will determine if the former Springbok wing will head to the Equality Court or not.
Willemse is scheduled to meet with them in an effort to resolve the matter that resulted in him walking off set during a live television broadcast on May 19.
Willemse’s lawyer, Nqobizitha Mlilo, said Willemse also wanted access to the e-mails sent by his fellow rugby analysts to executive producers and managers and their responses and replies.
“Ashwin became aware of these e-mails about him for the first time in the (Vincent) Maleka report. We want to have access to them and what the responses were that followed,” said Mlilo yesterday.
In Maleka’s report he mentions an e-mail sent by Nick Mallett in October 2016 to executive producer Scott Steward which states, among other things: “It would be great if Ashwin could be moved to the morning show where we don’t have to work together. I think he talks garbage, we irritate the hell out of each other and the working environment is unpleasant and tense.”
Maleka on Monday released a 50-page report into the incident, when Willemse told in-studio analysts Mallett and Naas Botha he would not be patronised and undermined by two people who played their rugby in the apartheid years.
The incident sparked a massive debate around racism in the country and led to all three former Springbok players and now analysts being off air.
Having interviewed all those who were present in the studio on May 19, Maleka found no evidence of racism and cleared Mallett and Botha to return to work.
But Willemse didn’t participate in the investigation because he felt the process was flawed. He claimed from the beginning racism was at play during the on-air and off-air talk between the three men and objected to SuperSport’s statement two days afterwards that there was no evidence of racism.
SuperSport said on Tuesday they would like to meet Willemse to give him a chance to state his case and try to resolve the matter. Mlilo confirmed the parties are scheduled to meet at 9am today.