The Members’ Council of Cricket South Africa (CSA) this week fired the organisation’s interim board with immediate effect over an apparent breakdown of trust.
The Members’ Council is the organisation’s highest decision-making body, made up of provincial presidents.
TimesLive reported that the council had already communicated its decision to sports minister Nathi Mthethwa‚ the parliamentary portfolio committee and the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc).
Mthethwa convened the new board in the wake of the controversies that have beset CSA for the past few years. But the council accused the interim board of ‘running amok’ and undermining them.
The Members’ Council reportedly found that the interim board had allegedly changed the reporting lines and was reporting directly to the minister instead of to the council.
Matters apparently came to a head when the new board allegedly considered appointing Haroon Lorgat as acting CEO and Jacques Faul as company secretary.
The interim board was appointed by Mthethwa last month, with a mandate ‘to restore stakeholder and public confidence in the administration of the game’.
The other interim board members are Omphile Ramela‚ Judith February‚ Professor Andre Odendaal‚ Dr Stavros Nicolaou‚ Xolani Vonya‚ Andile Mbatha and Caroline Mampuru, with retired justice Zak Yacoob as the chairperson.
Newly elected Sascoc president Barry Hendricks was reported to have received and acknowledged the letter from the CSA Members’ Council dismissing the interim board.
Some of the Council members are mired in controversies affecting the CSA and could have direct conflicts of interest.
CSA has called on Sascoc to intervene and work with it to expeditiously come up with a turnaround strategy, and brief the minister thereafter.
TimesLive said that, if this failed, the Members’ Council would complain directly to the sport’s world governing body, the International Cricket Council, about ministerial interference.