Election of new CSA president delayed as CSA is forced to postpone AGM

Cricket South Africa (CSA) has been forced to postpone its annual general meeting, scheduled for Saturday, during which they were expected to elect a new president and at least two other board members.

The postponement came after CSA met with the country's minister of sport, Nathi Mthethwa, who demanded to see the forensic report, which resulted in former CEO Thabang Moroe being fired last week. In a statement on Monday, CSA cited the review and implementation of the findings of the report, a review of its governance model, an extension of the recruitment process for board members, and a reconfiguration of its organisational structure as four of the reasons the AGM cannot take place as planned.

A new date for the meeting has not been announced yet.

In the statement, CSA indicated that it would look into outstanding matters from the Judge Chris Nicholson Commission, which took place eight years ago to investigate the 2009 IPL bonus scandal, and whose recommendations have not been fully implemented. Among other things, Judge Nicholson recommended that three-quarters of CSA's board be made up of independent members, and despite accepting the Nicholson report, to date less than half of CSA's board comes from outside the provincial unions.

CSA will also closely scrutinise "governance issues" over the last four years, dating back to 2016. That means an event such as the cancelled Global League T20 (GLT20) will fall into the period under review. Former CEO Haroon Lorgat parted ways with CSA in September 2017 following differences over the handling of the GLT20, and more details over why the tournament did not go ahead may yet emerge from CSA's review.

It is also expected that CSA's Members' Council - the body made up of the 14 provincial union presidents, which holds the highest decision-making powers in this country's cricket - will engage with the forensic report that investigated current CSA board members and led to Moroe being dismissed. Until late last week, this report had not been presented to the Member' Council and those who wished to access it had to sign non-disclosure agreements. The Gauteng Cricket Board, based in Johannesburg, has led the call for the report to be made available and also questioned the nomination process of new board members, which will be relooked at.

All the above processes will involve engagement with Mtethwa, the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (the umbrella body under which all the country's sports federations operate), and "other stakeholders".

It will also include an analysis of CSA's Transformation Strategy, which has been in the headlines over the last two months as a result of the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement. CSA have set up a Social Justice and Nation Building Committee, appointed a transformation ombudsman and have indicated they would look into paying reparations to those discriminated against in the past, all of which will be reviewed ahead of the rescheduled AGM.

For now, this means CSA remains in a state of flux with an acting president, Beresford Williams, an incomplete board following the resignation of independent director Steve Cornelius last month, an acting CEO, Kugandrie Govender, an acting chief commercial officer, Thamie Mthembu, and three former staff members all fighting dismissals in court. Moroe, former chief operating officer Naasei Appiah and former head of sales and sponsorship Clive Eksteen, who were all suspended in December 2019 and fired this year, have taken their matters to the labour court, in Moroe and Appiah's case, and the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration in Eksteen's case. At the same time, details over South Africa's summer schedule, which would usually start this month, have yet to be revealed.