Fikile Mbalula succeeded in lighting a fire beneath South African sports federations which have failed to adhere to agreed targets for transformation, but there remains confusion amongst federations over the exact nature of their negligence.
The Sports Minister, in typically vociferous fashion, yesterday sanctioned the domestic mother bodies of rugby, cricket, netball and athletics revoking their privilege to bid for major international events to be staged in South Africa as a result of those organisations not achieving transformation targets set out in a Memorandum of Understanding signed with the national Sports and Recreation department last year.
Cricket South Africa was still awaiting further clarity from Mbalula about the nature of their supposed shortcomings, but Mbalula’s punitive measure will have no effect on the organisation in the short term. It won’t inhibit any bilateral tours - so South Africa’s trips to the West Indies in June and Australia in November will go ahead, while the in-coming tour in December by Sri Lanka won’t be affected either.
South Africa is set to host the Under-19 World Cup in 2020 and the women’s 50-over World Cup in 2022, but seeing as those events have already been given to Cricket SA by the International Cricket Council (ICC), there is no need for a bidding process to occur.
All of the ICC’s major events - the 50- World Cup, the Champions Trophy and the World T20 events - for the next nine years have already been distributed among the so called ‘big three’ (England, India and Australia) as part of the controversial take-over of the ICC by leaders of those three individual boards last year.
However despite the gaudy nature of Mbalula’s announcement yesterday it serves as a wake-up call to organisation’s who have appeared lax in transforming their sports to better reflect the racial demographic of the country.Cricket South Africa are understood to be perplexed about what exactly Mbalula wants from them.
The body had agreed with government last year that the national teams would continue to be selected on merit and that targets with regard to transformation be pushed at lower levels.Cricket SA were awaiting the return to the country of its most senior administrators - the body’s president Chris Nenzani and CEO, Haroon Lorgat, who had both been in Dubai attending ICC meetings - before commenting.
At the start of the 2015/16 domestic season Cricket SA implemented a new target for the six franchises that demanded at least three black African players have to be selected in the starting teams in all competitions. That led to a lot of unhappiness across the race spectrum and Cricket SA is currently in a process of understanding the effects of that move.
The Star