SARU throws book at Zelt with eight new charges
Polemical former Western Province Rugby Football Union President Zelt Marais is having the book thrown at him by the South African Rugby Football Union.
Marais, slapped with a 12-month ban in 2022 for various breaches of the SARU Code of Conduct, 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.
@rugby365com obtained a copy of the letter, which was delivered to Marais via electronic media and by hand.
Advocate André May was appointed Adv May as the Judicial Officer to adjudicate the charges levelled against Marais.
“Please be advised that this letter serves as notice, in terms of clause 5.2 of the SARU – Disciplinary and Judicial Regulations, that the Chief Executive Officer has referred your numerous and serious contraventions of the Code of Conduct to the Chairman of the National Judicial Committee,” Du Pisani said in the letter to the disgraced former WPRFU boss.
Marais was advised that he has the right to legal representation in the disciplinary proceedings.
One of the main issues against Marais is that in April he appeared in a video with Dr Jerome Swartz of the Africa Restoration Alliance, a political party that garnered only 11 108 votes in the recent national elections.
Marais’ conversation with Swartz, which is still on the party’s social media channels, followed shortly after ARA had instituted proceedings against SARU in an attempt to have SARU’s decision to place WPRFU under administration declared unlawful and set aside.
Marais was introduced as being “in fact the WPRFU President”.
Swartz talks about the reason for the litigation instituted against SARU and claims that “SARU has stolen close to ZAR1-billion” from the 90-odd Western Province clubs.
They refer to it as “normally brown clubs, coloured clubs and black clubs” in the video.
They also accuse the new equity partner, Red Disa, as complicit in the ‘theft’- having robbed the local clubs.
“That is criminal,” Swartz said, with Marais not correcting any of the statements made by Swartz.
Marais also thanks ARA for “coming to the assistance” of the clubs – to salvage their potential assets.
“If we do a deep dive into the transaction, the clubs were given only seven days to think about the transaction,” Marais said, adding: “It is totally against any ethics and reasonables and if you look from a governance point of view, contrary to the Companies Act and all other common law statutes that you can find.
“The Clubs have all been misled.”
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Marais also claims that SARU is ‘recolonising’ the union.
“Our courts haven’t even touched on the reparations and the redistribution of the wealth that was stolen from our people 300 years ago,””Marais said adding: “Here we have a continuous dispossession of wealth from the people that our government ought to protect.”
Du Pisani, in the letter to Marais, said that by his former position and involvement in WPRFU, is still accountable and subject to the code of conduct.
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