AGM uncertainty may extend Nenzani’s term

The Covid-19 pandemic has financially ravaged every sector of industry‚ including sporting activities around the world‚ and the virus is now wreaking havoc with SA's season of sports AGMs.

Several organisations have postponed their AGMs to later in the year due to the coronavirus outbreak and it is understood Cricket SA (CSA) is likely to follow suit and delay its September meeting. This could result in the incumbent president, Chris Nenzani, staying put for a little longer.

CSA last week failed to meet their own deadline to finalise proceedings into suspended CEO Thabang Moroe‚ citing Covid-19 restrictions, despite having had three months and 20 days to deal with the issue from December 6 to March 26.

It has been reliably learnt that proceedings against Moroe have yet to resume six months after he was suspended.

The proceedings are likely to take more than three months and could potentially see the AGM‚ which will mark the end of Nenzani’s seven-year reign as president‚ postponed to a later date.

CSA did not rule out the possibility of the postponement of the AGM when asked.

The organisation said it would be guided by the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC)‚ which advises President Cyril Ramaphosa‚ but at the moment it was unable to set the electoral processes in motion to allow for the election of the new leadership.

“CSA would not want to pre-empt the NCCC‚ but just simply reading by the rate at which the relaxation of the Covid-19 regulations is moving‚ it would at least appear that the country may soon move to a better level of the regulations‚” CSA said when asked if the Covid-19 restrictions could potentially lead to the postponement of the AGM.

“So to answer your question‚ at this stage we do not have any information that we can use to start moving around our off-the-field cricket-related business.

“This is also born out of the fact that there are remote provisions for these sessions to take place‚ so we will be guided by the permits of the Covid-19 regulations in determining how this proceeds.”

Long-serving president Nenzani‚ who was first elected in 2013‚ has reached the ceiling of power within the CSA corridors as he cannot stand for re-election, having already served two three-year terms.

Nenzani was supposed to have stepped down at last year’s AGM but the former president of Border Cricket somehow successfully managed to lobby to have the constitution amended to allow him to serve for another year.

In his speech at last year’s AGM‚ Nenzani said his prolonged stay in office was meant to help stabilise the organisation.

But in the months that followed CSA disintegrated, with board members resigning en masse and headline sponsors Standard Bank ending a more than R100m-a-year sponsorship‚ saying the organisation’s blunders had damaged its reputation.

Following a chaotic period for CSA in December‚ key stakeholders‚ including the players and sponsors‚ called for the board to step down but instead Moroe was put on precautionary suspension over “allegations of misconduct”.