SA cricket is in crisis and sports minister Nathi Mthethwa isn’t really helping matters

The meddling of politicians in sport seldom ends well, which South Africans should be acutely aware of after Apartheid’s awful segregation efforts and a lengthy list of sports ministers since democracy who have mostly been pretty inept when it comes to actually achieving anything worthwhile in their portfolio.

I disagree, however, with those who say there is no need for a minister of sport. In terms of nation-building, we have already seen the huge role sport plays and it is something very dear to so many South Africans that there does need to be some sort of regulation and oversight to ensure sport continues to operate in the best interests of the public.

The current Cricket South Africa Board, as incompetent and self-indulgent an infection of administrators as you could have the misfortune to find, is prime evidence of the need to have some sort of governmental control over sport.

But the way current Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa has waded into the current crisis in South African cricket does not provide much hope that he is doing any good; at the moment he is probably as effective as that renowned chocolate teapot, one of his predecessors, Fikile Mbalula.

Mthethwa does not give the impression that he really has his finger on the pulse of what cricket’s most pressing issues are; in fact, he probably has very little knowledge of the running of the game in this country, given that he threatened Cricket South Africa earlier this year with not sending them to the Olympics if they don’t comply with his wishes. (Cricket does not feature at the Olympics in case you were wondering; although T20 could be a great addition to the quadrennial event).

Transformation in cricket is, of course, an issue that is burning like Cajun spice in a sensitive throat and there is no doubt CSA have to relook the work of their transformation committee, which has been in existence for 22 years. And it is certainly part of the minister’s job to keep an eye on how all sports are attempting to reflect the demographics of the country and address the wrongs of the past.

But at the moment, the most pressing issue for cricket is massive-scale misgovernance and the attempted capture of the sport and its money and prestige by a select few self-serving individuals. The CSA Board and executives such as Thabang Moroe, Naasei Appiah and Welsh Gwaza had already led cricket to the edge of a financial precipice before Covid-19 arrived to really set the cat amongst the pigeons.

We are facing the near-collapse of the professional game in this country and Mthethwa’s short-sighted focus at the moment seems to be on getting the entire Board to resign and installing an all-black team of directors and management in their place.

Chasing every white administrator and former player out of the game will be disastrous; the white community still has so much to offer South African cricket and, given the inequalities of the past, a lot of the intellectual property that made the Proteas the number one team in the world resides in their ranks.

All Mthethwa’s efforts seem to have achieved so far is bringing the seven members of the Members Council who are not directors closer to the Board, based on the age-old proverb that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

As a government minister, Mthethwa should have the leadership nous to know that solving a problem is seldom achieved by using scorched earth means; instead of firing a figurative nuclear missile at CSA, he should have a few gunners and those marksmen should be focused on the problem individuals.

An entirely new Board will be too much of a disruption if CSA are to become a smooth-functioning organisation again and there are directors like Dheven Dharmalingam, Marius Schoeman and Tebogo Siko who were only appointed to the Board in the last year and have been vocal in their support for change.

Given the hardships our government officials have inflicted on so many people through their own greed and corruption, why should we trust them to solve cricket’s problems? It was interesting to see the infamous Service Provider X of the Fundudzi Forensic Report, against whom criminal charges have been recommended, being allegedly unmasked this week as Unathi Tshotwana, who seems to be in the inner circle of government ministers.

Tshotwana was a fundraiser for the ANC Youth League and a high-ranking ANC official in the Western Cape, as well as being the spokesman for the Minister of Energy and a liaison officer for the National Department of Human Settlements. His wedding in the Winelands was featured on Top Billing and was attended by Faith Muthambi, the former communications minister who has had criminal charges laid against her for lying to parliament, and Zizi Kodwa, now the deputy state security minister.

Mthethwa has already shown that he cares little for the good of the game by refusing to allow our Proteas women’s team to tour England in September, with the hosts picking up all costs for the measures to safeguard against Covid-19. There has still been no response from the ministry since they were asked for the reasons the women were denied such a wonderful opportunity, when sportsmen from other codes have been allowed to compete overseas.

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