Instead of giving the departing board members a heroes farewell, Cricket South Africa should publicly apologise to the nation, writes ANDRE HUISAMEN.
Over the past few months, CSA has starkly reminded one of the repugnant arrogance with which guilty politicians have been lauded in this country after stealing public funds.
Reading the string of CSA tweets on Sunday afternoon that confirmed the resignation of acting president Beresford Williams and other members of the board, made me think of the lack of accountability prevalent at the governing body during its darkest hour.
In one embarrassing tweet, the CSA PR team wrote: ‘CSA understands and appreciates the Board members’ reasoning behind their resignations, based on their love for cricket and their respect of CSA.’
These members don’t love cricket and they certainly don’t respect CSA, because the body doesn’t belong to those dining at the fancy table. It belongs to the masses in the country that have been crying for leadership and accountability, while those members kept their mouths shut to protect themselves.
Williams and some of these board members tried everything in their power to avoid facing the music or owning up to the catastrophic disaster the governing body has plunged itself into.
Blaming the media for their bad image in light of the Fundudzi report was an example of that. It’s now time for CSA to apologise to the South African cricketing fraternity for its lack of leadership and accountability during a time it was most needed.
CSA failed South African cricket as an institution but, more importantly, it failed the supporters.
Williams and co watched with folded arms while former CEO Thabang Moroe went on some sort of bender by misusing funds for his own liquor needs.
More importantly, they refused, at first, to heed desperate public and government calls for them to step aside to let the organisation be restructured.
Blatantly put, they were too arrogant to think about anyone else but themselves.
CSA has become an embarrassment to everything we as South Africans stand for and especially to our pride as a sporting nation.
Not to mention that the rest of the cricketing world and the ICC have been keeping close tabs on us while the whole fracas is playing out.
Any CSA member, who kept quiet while being aware of the irregularities over the past few years, is anything but loyal, dedicated or respectful – no matter how hard their social media team tries to portray them in a positive light.
Those members are just as part of the problem and should also resign to rid the organisation of the corruption virus that has crippled it to its core.
While these resignations aren’t by any means the end of CSA’s problems, the body now does have the opportunity, in light of the members stepping down, to own up for once and at least show some accountability.
