TUESDAY, 2.45PM:
LOUIS LUYT crushed the dissidents this morning, when he was re-elected president of the South African Rugby Football Union with a massive majority. He won an outright majority in the first round of voting in Cape Town on Tuesday morning, gaining 33 of the 47 votes against Border’s Mluleki George, and Natal’s Keith Parkinson. Luyt said afterwards: “They did better than I expected. I expected a full house.”
George lost his position as senior vice-president, and Parkinson failed to gain a seat on the executive. Parkinson is president of the Natal union which took Sarfu to court earlier this year on the format of the Super 12 competition. George was the rugby union’s most senior black executive..
Perhaps the most surprising aspect was that the 15 black members of the old anti-apartheid SA Rugby Union did not vote for George, despite giving him their assurances the day before. Both Parkinson and George said that many board members who promised to vote for them changed their minds at the last minute.
This will be Luyt’s fifth consecutive year as the country’s top rugby boss, having turned South African rugby into his personal fiefdom. Luyt may well have turned the perceived threat from the government’s commisison of inquiry into rugby into his trump card. With the danger of rugby’s dirty linen being hung out, the union closed ranks and voted for the man who has promised to keep the inquiry at bay with court actions.
The commission aims to look at rugby sponsorship deals and the controversy over commission payments to rugby officials, including Luyt’s relatives. It was this controversy that prompted Luyt’s two challengers to step up.
But Luyt was already saying on Tuesday that once the battle with the government is over, he is willing to leave rugby’s helm to someone else. The new senior vice-president is once again black, Silas Nkakunu of the Eastern Provice, with Tobie Titus of Western Province as junior vice-president.