JEREMY LOVELL, Cape Town | Tuesday 3.50pm.
JUDGEMENT in the Cape High court on the media’s rights to broadcast live the proceedings at the King Commission of Inquiry into match-fixing in cricket will be delivered at 8.30am on Wednesday.
Live Africa Network News, e-TV and SABC have launched a high court application to have a ruling by commission head Judge Edward King barring live broadcasting of testimonies overturned.
The commission’s secretary John Bacon says the hearings will go ahead after the judgement has been delivered.
First on the stand will be disgraced cricket captain Hansie Cronje who will face cross-examination after last week’s testimony.
Cronje, sacked on April 11 after first denying then admitting taking money from bookies, has already testified that he accepted nearly $100000 over a period of four years but denied actually fixing any match results.
He has accepted full responsibility for his greed, said he will never play for his country again and effectively exonerated his team colleagues from any wrongdoing.
Cronje, who spoke repeatedly of his shame and guilt during his televised evidence on Thursday, has acquired the services of a psychiatrist to attest to the emotional strain he is under — a fact accepted by King, the judge running the inquiry.
Cronje has been offered immunity from prosecution as long as King finds he has made a full disclosure — prompting newspaper speculation at the weekend which noted some unexplained lapses over dates in the cricketer’s testimony.
Letters of support have poured into newspapers across the country, with more than 80% of people arguing for clemency and 90% saying he should be allowed to play for South Africa again.
Doubt over the success of the commission is largely due to the fact that so far the legal teams have treated the witnesses with immense deference.
Although the testimony on Monday last week by United Cricket Board of South Africa president Ali Bacher was all third-hand and unverified, the lawyers did not raise one challenge to any of it.
Bacher spoke of information he had from former Pakistani test batsman Majid Khan that matches between Pakistan and India and Pakistan and Bangladesh in last year’s World Cup in England had been fixed.
He also read out a letter from businessman Jacques Sellschop detailing a conversation on match-fixing the latter had on a flight from Johannesburg to Durban with someone he later identified from a photograph as Pakistan bowler Shoaib Ahktar.
Khan has said he stands by his information and is willing to testify to the King commission, while Ahktar has denied being in South Africa at the time of the alleged conversation.
In neither case did Bacher offer any verification or information he himself had obtained first hand despite having been at the top of South African and world cricket for nearly a decade.
As with Cronje, Bacher pointed the finger of blame at foreigners — notably Indian and Pakistani — painting a picture of innocence of the young South African cricketers pursued by hot money just a few years after the end of apartheid isolation.
Two of the people named by Cronje — Hammad Cassiem and Marlon Aronstam — are expected to be at Wednesday’s hearings in Cape Town’s Centre for the Book — newly dubbed the centre for the bookies.
It is not known if they will be called to testify on Wednesday.
King is due to hand his report to President Thabo Mbeki by June 30. There has been some speculation he might ask for his terms of reference to be broadened at that time.
South Africa denies India seeking Cronje’s extradition. — Reuters