All eyes on CSA and Minister of Sport
CRICKET South Africa’s (CSA) administration will be firmly under the microscope this week as it meets with Minister of Sport Nathi Mthethwa while doubts about the nominations process for Saturday’s Annual General Meeting continue to grow.
On Sunday morning, a letter signed by half of the Border Cricket Board’s Members Council was sent to CSA’s company secretary, Welsh Gwaza, questioning the legitimacy of the BCB’s president, Simphiwe Ndzundzu, standing as a candidate for a spot in CSA’s Board of Directors.
Ndzundzu is the subject of investigation for assault in East London after he allegedly burst into the home of Sinethemba
Mjekula, another BCB official who also currently serves on Cricket SA’s reserve umpires panel, in July this year and choked him. Ndzundzu is also alleged to have hit Mjekula’s sister with a knobkerrie, breaking her arm in the process and pushed Mjekula’s disabled mother to the floor.
The letter to Gwaza is signed by seven of the 14 representatives of the BCB’s Members Council. Among a host of queries, the seven Council representatives point out that Ndzundzu should have stepped down as president while the police investigation continues. Instead,
Ndzundzu tried to chair the BCB’s AGM last Friday night and force through the BCB’s endorsement of him to be a candidate to sit on CSA’s Board of Directors which is supposed to be voted for at the AGM on Saturday. “This man has brought Border cricket into disrepute and he was never taken to (a disciplinary committee) at Border Cricket or Cricket SA,” the disgruntled officials wrote.
Ndzundzu’s presence on the list of candidates was also questioned by the Central Gauteng Lions union last week, in a letter its Board wrote to Gwaza, CSA’s acting CEO, Kugandrie
Govender and the rest of CSA’s Members Council.
“I am quite surprised that nobody has, in the circumstances, raised the eligibility of him to stand for elections at a time when CSA publicly professes its support for the anti-violence campaign against women,” the CGL president Anne Vilas, wrote.
CSA is set to meet with Mthetwhwa today after he demanded answers to “substantive issues” he raised at a previous meeting with the federation on August 17. Among those issues will be the forensic audit report, which CSA’s Members Council commissioned earlier this year to look into the conduct of its former CEO, Thabang Moroe and other management controls within the organisation.
Besides Mthethwa, representatives of CSA’s Members Council, including Vilas and KwaZulu Natal Cricket Union president Ben Dladla have asked to see the report. However Vilas and Dladla have been told they can only view the report – which apparently runs to 468 pages – at the offices of CSA’s lawyers Bowman Gilfillan and then only after they’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement.