The Democratic Alliance (DA) has taken note of developments at CricketSA (CSA) over the past number of weeks. While we would never want to involve politics in the daily running of sport organisations, we also cannot sit on the sideline and see one of South Africa’s beloved sports seemingly embroiled in a crisis.
It has become abundantly obvious that CSA CEO, Thabang Moroe, is not fit for office, and may not have the necessary aptitude or experience to run the organisation. The DA is therefore of the view that Moroe must do the right thing and resign before it is too late.
During the past few weeks there have been numerous speculations regarding maladministration in the organisation, which was further compounded by Moroe’s decision to ban 5 journalists by revoking their accreditation to cover the Mzansi Super League games on Sunday. Moroe has since backtracked and called this decision a “mishap”.
Either way, any attempt to silence and censor the media should be condemned in the strongest possible terms as it goes against our Constitution.
There are a myriad of issues which seem to hamper CSA, including the restructuring of the domestic cricket competitions, the concentration of power to make key appointments by the CEO , the failure to appoint a lead director, the suspension of senior executive officials and the dispute with South African Cricketers’ Association (SACA). On Thursday, we also saw the CSA CFO, Iqbal Khan quit and four independent directors have stepped down following the earlier resignation of Professor Shirley Zinn.
It is not in the interest of the game or its players and supporters, for CricketSA to be brought into disrepute as it has over the past couple of weeks.
The DA will therefore also write an urgent letter to Chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Commitee on Sport, Ms Beauty Nomvuzo Dlulane, to request that CricketSA appear before Parliament in order to satisfy our constitutional mandate to perform an oversight role on sport as we simply we cannot allow status quo to continue.