Chris Nenzani set to stay on as Cricket SA mulls AGM postponement due to Covid-19

The embattled outgoing Cricket South Africa (CSA) board and its president Chris Nenzani are set to cling to power beyond the end of the expiry of their term in office in September.

The Covid-19 pandemic has financially ravaged every sector of the industry‚ including sporting activities around the world‚ and the flu-like virus is now wrecking havoc with the AGM season is South Africa that is well underway.

Several organisations have postponed their AGMs to later this year due to the coronavirus outbreak and TimesLIVE understands CSA will use the pandemic to delay the annual meeting in September.

CSA last week failed to meet their own deadline to finalise proceedings into suspended chief executive 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.

TimesLIVE has been reliably informed 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‚ postponed to a later date.

CSA did not rule out the possibility of the postponement of the AGM when TimesLIVE asked if‚ like with the Moroe situation‚ Covid-19 restrictions will not scupper their annual meeting.

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

"CSA would not want to preempt 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 borne 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 as the CSA president can only serve two three-year terms as per the constitution.

But the former president of Border Cricket Board in the Eastern Cape 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 organisations’ 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 chief executive Moroe was put on precautionary suspension over “allegations of misconduct”.