Attorney Mark Leathers, a Director at Mc Naught and Company, representing over 100 Comrades Marathon Association (CMA) members will be fighting for the rights and voice of the running community at 2pm today (Wednesday 14 August) against a severely compromised Comrades Board and the dubious decisions of KZN Athletics (KZNA).
The CMA Board originally said it did not have the finances to hold a Special General Meeting (SGM) after a racist WhatsApp from Board member Zinhle Sokhela surfaced and the subsequent eruption of Vanillagate. However, CMA members (as per the CMA constitution) called for a SGM and specially asked for no food or drinks to be provided to save costs. The SGM is scheduled for 6pm on Thursday 15 August but the Board decided to provide food and drinks anyway. The Board also appears to have the money to waste of frivolous court appearances.
The court action is a result of an 11th hour decree, issued via email on Monday 12 August, preventing non-KZN CMA members from speaking or voting at the SGM on 15 August. The draconian declaration reads:
“Please take note of the following clauses 15.1 and 15.3 of the Resolution as passed by the Executive Board of KwaZulu-Natal Athletics (KZNA) on 7 August 2024 regarding CMA Membership.
15. RESOLUTION OF THE KZNA EXECUTIVE BOARD
15.1 Membership of a club is limited by the domicillium rule. Due to the fact that CMA is a Special Member of KZNA, the Executive Board of KZNA resolves that the membership of CMA should be limited to people who are domiciled within the jurisdiction of KZNA
15.3 Where CMA has existing members who come from other countries or provinces, their membership shall be retained as volunteers who may participate as observers at its Annual General or any other meetings but may not participate in the strategic direction (discussions) of the CMA and therefore may not speak or vote at such meetings. These members shall be allowed to attend all members socials; and/or participate in the staging of the race as volunteers.”
The above statement is obviously illegal and unlawful. Official word from the Comrades Board is that KZNA’s constitution is higher than the CMA’s so ‘we just have to lie down and do what they tell us’. This is despite a High Court ruling (Morozova vs the CMA / ASA) in 2022, that all CMA and KZNA parties are aware of, that the CMA is independent and does not fall under the legal authority of ASA (and by definition would not fall under KZNA which is a subsidiary of ASA).
The KZNA decree attempts to argue that the CMA is a ‘running club’ and therefore falls under the highly controversial domicillium rule. This logic is patently flawed as CMA does not have licensed members or issue running license, has no approved running kit and is not registered as an official running club. Out of province CMA members have been able to speak and vote at CMA general meetings for over 40 years (since the CMA’s inception in 1981).
It is also noteworthy that KZNA have made no attempts to block or curtail the activities of the ‘community marshals’, a group of impoverished community members who have been exploited by specific Board members to secure that they are voted onto the Board and keep their seats. None of community marshals is a licensed runner. A CMA document from 2022 notes, “ever since then [2016] our community marshals have prevailed as the most powerful voting block within Comrades.”
The ‘community marshal’ CMA memberships are paid for in bulk and the portfolio itself has resisted all attempts to bring in good governance and traceability. Former Race and Operations Manager, Ann Ashworth, tried to bring in acceptable governance for audit purposes and believes that her attempts to do so were one of the reasons she was fired by the CMA Board.
The KZNA decree is entirely illogical and can only be viewed as an attempt to stop the democratic process and silence CMA members who are unhappy with the rampant corruption, mismanagement and incompetence that has been exposed in this series of articles: https://runningmann.co.za/2024/08/06/has-the-comrades-marathon-been-captured-and-why-ann-ashworth-was-fired/
Whilst the compromised CMA Board Members and KZNA officials have attempted to paint this as a race issue, it is in fact a “runners vs corrupt administration” issue. When a call went out on social media for Power of Attorney forms to be completed by CMA members in support of the court action, runners across the racial spectrum responded in unison (as can be witnessed in this Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/Q27Taob9cauNeWzi/).
An example of the sentiment is expressed by Shadrack Sifiso Mthembu who, when returning his Power of Attorney form, said “Keep up the good work – lots of black athletes are also concerned about the state of affairs at CMA… so they can’t play the race card. We’re against corruption, incompetence, maladministration and abuse of power.”
Over 100 completed Power of Attorney forms were received and many more could have been added. Notable signatories included former winners, Bruce Fordyce and Shaun Meiklejohn, joint record holders for the most Comrades completed, Barry Holland and Louis Massyn, and women’s Gold medallist, Belinda Waghorn.
The magnitude of concern about the state of the CMA has resulted in many out-of-province CMA members taking leave from work and booking accommodation and flights to Pietermaritzburg. One member is even flying in from the UK for the SGM.
The CMA constitution currently only allows in person attendance and voting. Allowing online attendance and voting is one of the topics on Thursday’s agenda and would require a two-thirds majority vote to update the constitution in line with standard 21st century practices. It is expected that all runners who are CMA members will support this change but that the 210 bussed in and bought community marshals will be told to vote against this proposition. The full Founding Affidavit that will be argued in court can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WdOTd0wGUpOFCJrl9Kr7zAEuOOkqj6iT/view?usp=sharing
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Thank you Stuart for this 🙏
Hopefully sufficient response to this and other appeals will result in a “reasonable outcome”.
That is the first task.
The next task is to prise out the reason for this nonsense! Then we need to deal with the root cause and its perpetrators. How was this allowed to happen and how should it be dealt with? It is clear that there exists a growing cancer within this organisation and that should be exposed and removed.
Of course the other problem is the participation of KZNA which will have to be dealt with as a separate issue as it is a club representative body.
An SGM will have to be called and the Executive brought to account and if necessary dismissed. This could be a messy process which is described in the KZNA Constitution.
I hope he will be successful in obtaining a favourable judgement. I wonder if the CMA will even be present in court to defend this case?
The next thing would be to declare the election of members with so called “bought votes “ as being illegal, and falsely obtained and thus rendered as being null and void. We shall see. As for Ms Cools, she seems to have a lot to answer for.
Good work, some people want to make this issue a racial issue which is not. Corruption and incompetence has nothing to do with race. I hope this court process is successful. Comrade Marathon is for all of us irrespective of where you stay.
Get the help of the new minister of sport he will not tolerate this stupidity.
Hi Stuart. Why are you so quiet about the outcome of the SGM? Have you been gagged by somebody?
Just been very busy (and my head needs a break from Comrades shenanigans).