ASA-Pienaar deal placed on ice

CONTROVERSY surrounds a deal that Francois Pienaar’s sports marketing company, Sports4U, has with embattled Athletics SA (ASA).

As ASA prepares to vote in a new board on Saturday, claims have emerged that former president James Evans — also one of the five presidential candidates — failed to follow proper procedures before inking the deal in 2012.

Daan du Toit, chairman of the ad hoc committee running the federation until the election, said last month the Sports4U contract had been reactivated.

But this week he said it had been placed on ice again until it could be studied.

“We will refer the issue to the new board to review it,” he said. “We are not commenting on the validity of it.”

Rugby World Cup-winning captain Pienaar is one of the owners of Sports4U, the company behind the successful Varsity Cup competitions.

Evans signed the contract, to run for four years, on October 2 2012, but some ASA board members at the time insist the president acted with neither their knowledge nor approval.

The problem, apparently, is that the ASA constitution stipulates that the position of president is non-executive, meaning Evans would have required his board’s approval to make an executive decision.

“We didn’t know he had signed the contract already,” said Shireen Noble, a former executive member. “It was signed not on behalf of the board.”

Another former board member, who asked not to be named, said the issue of employing a sports marketing company had been raised at an executive meeting after October 2 and no mention of the deal had been made. Instead, they had agreed to approach several marketing companies and to compare their quotes.

Board members claim they learned of the deal only after Sports4U director Dr Gary Vorster had given a presentation to them in January 2013.

That was one of several issues that caused running boardroom battles that paralysed the cash-strapped federation, leading to the world governing body, the IAAF, appointing the ad hoc committee.

ASA, which has lost its main sponsors, has debts of about R5million.

Vorster said he would wait until after the elections.

“Then we’ll sit down and talk to [ASA]. They must first get their house in order.”

Evans declined to go into the details, but spoke instead of “the absurdity of this coming up for the first time now”. “It is patent electioneering.” According to insiders, KwaZulu-Natal candidates Aleck Skhosana and Sello Mokoena are the front-runners for the presidency. Irrespective of who wins that race, Dr Harold Adams of Boland is said to be the favourite for vicepresident.