Newlands #SOLD!
NEWS: Newlands has been ‘sold’.
@rugby365com can reveal that the sale – to an undisclosed buyer – was voted on and approved by a Western Province Rugby Football Union council meeting in Cape Town on Monday.
Details around the ‘willing buyer’ remain sketchy.
Reports linking international banking and wealth management group Investec to the transaction have since been dismissed.
“Investec can confirm that the company has not played a role in the purchase of Newlands Stadium,” said a statement from the group that was one of two major players spurned and betrayed by the Zelt Marais regime before the bankrupt union was placed under the administration of the South African Rugby Union.
Current WPRFU administrator Peter Jooste has been hard at work trying to finalise the sale – amidst a slew of attacks from within the pro-Zelt lobby.
(Continue below …)
Jooste met with several ‘legal’ challenges from a fringe political party and its advocacy group – all supporters of the Zelt Marais lobby.
They were determined to halt the sale of Newlands.
Harold Gie attorneys at the last month fired off another letter to SARU, the SARU-appointed administrator, Jooste, and Danny Jones, the WPRFU’s GM: Amateur Rugby.
The letter, which @rugby365com has a copy of, confirmed that they are acting on behalf of African Restoration Alliance, a fringe Western Cape political party, William Angelo Fisher and Godfrey Gavin Afrika.
ARA, Fisher and Afrika were at the forefront of the coup de main on SARU over its decision to place WPRFU under administration in October 2021.
They filed papers in the Western Cape High Court in May in an attempt to have the administration overturned by asking that Section 29.5 of SARU’s constitution (under which the administration of WPRFU was implemented) be declared unconstitutional.
In their latest dispatch, they strongly objected to a Special General Meeting held last month in which the SARU-appointed administrator, Jooste, was “mandated” to proceed with the sale of Newlands and negotiate a settlement with Flyt/Dreamworld.
“Both the status of the meeting, as well as the purported resolutions adopted at the meeting are of great concern to our clients,” the letter said, adding that they will bring an “urgent application” to halt the process and allow a court to decide the matter.
The letter also excoriated the meeting, calling it a “sham”, as well as Jooste and Jones.
So far no court date has been set for their challenge and there is no confirmation of the urgent application – that they threatened with, in their letter.
* While all this was ongoing Marais is having the book thrown at him by SARU.
Slapped with a 12-month ban in 2022 for various breaches of the SARU Code of Conduct, he now faces a new disciplinary hearing.
The new hearing – with a date yet to be determined – includes eight charges for ongoing breaches and his insistence that he is still the WPRFU President.
Chantal du Pisani, the head of Legal and Compliance at SARU; sent Marais a letter informing him of the hearing.
@king365ed
@rugby365com
* Related
Zelt lobby’s new legal challenge
The asking price for owning Newlands
Political party drops legal bomb on SARU
SARU throws the book at Zelt with eight new charges
Disentangling WPRFU, WPPR and the commercial chaos
SARU reacts to EPRU and ‘gunslingers’ stand-off
Court rules in EPRU Presidential stand-off
