CSA "shrewd, not being truthful" say blind cricketers

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

CRICKET SA (CSA) stand accused of being shrewd and untruthful in their public statements on their impasse with Blind Cricket SA (BCSA) over funding.

That will no doubt set sparks flying at a meeting between the two organisations in Cape Town on Thursday - the latest lurch in a saga that could see CSA dragged before the equality court.

Last week, BCSA lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission (HRC) over what they consider CSA’s lack of financial support for the country’s blind cricketers.

The issue came to a head over CSA’s failure to help BCSA fund the blind World Cup, which was played in Cape Town and ended on Sunday with India beating Pakistan in the final.

“We asked them for R1-million out of a budget of R5-million,” Armand Bam, BCSA’s national co-ordinator and a global director of the World Blind Cricket Council, said on Wednesday.

“We understand they can’t spend as much on us as they do on the Proteas, but how much do they spend on the Proteas?”

At the end of the 2010-11 financial year, CSA said 35% of their expenditure for that year had been consumed by the SA team. CSA’s latest annual meeting, in September, was told that the organisation’s expenditure for the financial year ending April 30, 2014 was R634092000. Thirty-five percent of that figure is R221932200.

Bam disputed CSA chief executive Haroon Lorgat’s assertion last week that BCSA had been “fully aware and kept abreast” that help would be forthcoming only if CSA were given lottery money.

“That is the tail-end of the story, perhaps the last month or two,” Bam asked. “They had already committed themselves to assisting us, and I have the emails to prove it. We have been talking to them from around September last year.”

Lorgat claimed that “due process has not been followed in securing funding of the magnitude that was sought”.

Bam challenged that statement: “CSA are being shrewd in their statements on the matter - they are not giving the correct context of the communication between us.

“I don’t think they’re chief executive is being truthful in the way he is communicating with the public about this.

“We have followed the correct process; we have dealt the manager we should have dealt with.”

The communications co-ordinator of the HRC, Isaac Mangena, confirmed BCSA had laid a complaint against CSA, which was “in the process of being registered and assessed”.

“We are also looking at jurisdiction and should we satisfy ourselves that it is a matter which we are authorised to investigate, it will be investigated,” Mangena said.

Although reluctant to pre-empt the probe, Mangena said that “on the face of it, it seems like a matter that falls within equality - something our assessment should inform”.

Should the impasse “not be resolved through our interventions”, Mangena said, it could as a last resort be referred to the equality court.

The Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act includes “special measures to promote equality with regard to race, gender and disability”.

“If it is proved in the prosecution of any offence that unfair discrimination on the grounds of race, gender or disability played a part in the commission of the offence, this must be regarded as an aggravating circumstance for purposes of sentence,” the Act says.

CSA ignored requests for comment. Their “mission” involves “basing our activities on fairness, which includes inclusivity and non-discrimination”.