Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhenkesi Stofile on Tuesday threw his weight behind a call for South African Rugby Union (Saru) president Brian van Rooyen and other senior figures in the union’s management to step down.
He was addressing a media briefing at Parliament alongside South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) president Moss Mashishi, who confirmed his organisation has sent a written request to the Saru executives to vacate their posts by close of business on Thursday.
”We are calling on the leadership of rugby — which means the president, his two deputies and his management committee — to step down from their positions so that we can begin to investigate myriad allegations they are making one against the other,” Stofile said.
He said the move is also an attempt to put in place a mechanism that will restore the integrity of the game ”and possibly to ease the confusion which probably is raging through the players’ heads at this point in time”.
The call follows months of damaging power struggles in the union, which were complicated by a row over the allocation of Super 14 franchises, and fuelled at the weekend by the release of a dossier of alleged irregularities committed by Van Rooyen.
Mashishi said Sascoc in the letter asked Van Rooyen and the other executives not to make themselves available for re-election until the end of the current term in February next year.
Sascoc proposed that an interim committee of three people — two from Saru and one from Sascoc — be appointed by Sascoc on Wednesday to oversee the day-to-day functions of SA Rugby until the special general council meeting on June 17, when it will be replaced.
Sascoc also urged the Saru chief executive to ”forward to us urgently all the documentation pertaining to the allegations referred to in the media”, some of which are serious enough to merit a formal investigation.
”Once the new management committee has been elected, a decision should be taken in conjunction with Sascoc as to how this investigation should be conducted,” Mashishi said.
”This is our position. It’s a firm position. We may be polite by nature, but we are deadly serious. Of course, it’s up to them how they react.”
Asked what will happen if the rugby men do not step down, he said: ”I don’t think it’s appropriate to anticipate what they will do. We’ll deal with it when it happens.”
Stofile said the step has not been taken lightly, and follows eight meetings with Saru in a bid to resolve the crisis, which has only got worse.
”We cannot in our view just watch when things go like this. We’ve tried our best. We’ve tried to assist them to reconcile. They are simply fighting all the time.”
Asked about the effect the crisis will have on the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Stofile said it has nothing to do with the tournament.
”It is not about conditionality, that if they don’t resolve the problem we will not have a World Cup,” he said. ”These are two different issues. They are unrelated.”
Challenged on government ”interference” in sport, he said: ”I think we must be careful what language we use. There is a difference between interference and intervention. Those are two different things … That’s not government interference. It’s a Sascoc intervention, and Sascoc is not government.”
Van Rooyen said earlier on Tuesday he was not aware that the union’s management committee had been asked to step down.
”I’ve got no idea. I’ve been in Parliament here, so you know, I haven’t received anything to that effect, so I won’t comment,” he said, speaking at Parliament after a briefing to the sports portfolio committee. — Sapa