The Times Editorial: The painfully long saga of whether Leonard Chuene mismanaged one of the country's proudest sports - athletics - drew to a close this week with a report by a senior counsel. Or did it?
The South African Olympic Committee presented a report in which Norman Arendse SC found Chuene guilty, along with two others, of "breaking every rule" in the book of Athletics South Africa.
Chuene was found guilty of nine charges while a former ASA vice-president, Kakata Maponyane, and an ex-board member, Simon Dlamini, were said to have brought the organisation into disrepute.
At the centre of this controversy is Caster Semenya, the world champion over 800m, who has been treated appallingly ever since she won the gold medal in Berlin in 2009. Chuene has been singled out as the villain of the piece. He was ousted from the association and various charges were brought against him.
The details of the Chuene case are dealt with in some detail elsewhere in this newspaper, and readers can make up their own minds about the guilt or innocence of the three people who were the subject of the disciplinary hearing.
The Times, while being in no way an apologist for Chuene and the other two men, believes the hearing was fundamentally flawed.
In the first place, none of the three was present at the hearing. They refused to attend, but the Olympic committee went ahead in the hope of bringing some order to what was clearly a chaotic situation.
Secondly, the hearing was conducted in secret and we have only Arendse's report of what transpired.
If it was found that Chuene and others committed a crime, as the report alludes to, it is the Olympic committee's obligation to report this to the police. In that way Chuene can be judged in a court of law, where all evidence will be rigorously tested. Only then will this matter be put to rest.
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