Cricket South Africa’s Members Council says it wasn’t given sufficient time to consider all aspects of the administrative restructuring that was supposed to be agreed to at last Saturday’s Special General Meeting.
The Members Council – CSA’s most powerful decision making body comprising the 14 provincial presidents – says it only received a final draft of the new Memorandum of Incorporation (MOI) from the Interim Board after midnight last Friday, giving them no time to get approval from their provincial affiliates before Saturday’s meeting at 3pm.
The Council asked for a one week delay, to allow the presidents to consult with their provincial unions.
A statement released from the Council yesterday reads: “The refusal by the Interim Board to afford Members’ Council sufficient time to deliberate the final draft of the MOI with their respective affiliates was a catalyst to this impasse.
“The time span of less than 24 hours to consider such an important document is in our opinion unreasonable.”
The MOI, essentially CSA’s constitution, needs to be changed in order to allow for a new board of directors the majority of whom would be independent.
CSA’s Members Council had on April 10 agreed with sports minister Nathi Mthethwa that it would make the necessary changes.
However at Saturday’s meeting where that was to take place, the Members Council couldn’t reach the 75 percent majority needed to enforce those changes.
That led Mthethwa to state that he would be invoking his powers under Section 13 of National Sports and Recreation Act, whereby he can remove funding from CSA and more crucially, remove recognition from the organisation, as the ruling authority of the sport in the country.
That could be classified as government interference and lead to the International Cricket Council (ICC) banning CSA.
Thus the Proteas would no longer be able to tour or participate in ICC tournaments like the T20 World Cup later this year.