The role of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee in the Cricket South Africa administrative fiasco, may yet have far reaching consequences for the leadership of the Olympic body
Sascoc appears to have been used by some elements of CSA’s Members Council - who want to maintain the status quo as far as the administrative structure is concerned - from halting processes to create a new Memorandum of Incorporation.
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On various occasions since 2019 when Cricket SA’s administration imploded, Sascoc has been looked to for guidance. Last September when CSA denied it access to the Fundudzi forensic report, it handed back to Sports Minister, Nathi Mthethwa the authority to investigate what was going wrong at CSA.
Then this year, despite being involved in the process regarding the drawing up of a new MOI for CSA, Sascoc, again withdrew from the exercise. Barry Hendricks, the Sascoc president, told last Saturday’s Special General Meeting, that Sascoc was forced to withdraw from the MOI process in February because it felt “uncomfortable.”
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Hendricks wasn’t scheduled to speak at the meeting, and only did so after a request from Eastern Province cricket union president Donovan May. Mthethwa said that allowing Hendricks to speak was “out of order,” adding he understood later, that it was clearly planned.
On Thursday during a briefing about the process so far, the Interim Board chair, Dr. Stavros Nicolaou referred to a letter dated February 9, in which Hendricks, writing to the Members Council’s acting chairman, Rihan Richards, told the Council to go ahead with formulating the MOI with the Interim Board, without Sascoc’s presence.
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Certainly Hendricks’ attempts at blackmailing CSA last Saturday - mentioning the national women’s team’s qualification for next year’s Commonwealth Games and how Sascoc was the only entity that could decide which teams went to the Games - was crass.
Seen now, in light of Sascoc, not once but twice (if the forensic audit report withdrawal last September is included) handing CSA’s crisis back to the Sports Ministry, it puts Hendricks in a position, where it must be asked if he has the good of SA cricket at heart. His and Sascoc’s actions in this CSA fiasco, suggests that isn’t the case.
Mthethwa said in a radio interview this week that Sascoc “failed dismally,” in its attempts to deal with CSA. “The problem with sport is that you have individuals whose parochial interests supersede the national interest. Sascoc was presented as a paragon of correctness and uprightness (at last Saturday’s meeting) which they are not. If they were, they would have dealt with this matter, now they want to come through the backdoor.”