Tough cleaning job awaits new softball brooms
Calistus Kolantsho | Friday April 23, 2021 12:55
Katlholo Mosimanegape would finally get a chance to lead softball after losing to Thabo Thamane in the past elections. He is unopposed for the top job.
At press time, there was no nomination for the position of public relations officer while Badika Mosweu from Rebels softball club had entered the race for the vice president’s post.
It has been a difficult period for the Thamane-led committee and to many, the past four years have been the death of softball. The challenge is that the AGM would be held virtually and limited to two hours due to COVID-19 restrictions, which some affiliates feel is insufficient. “What are we going to do in two hours where elections and issues are arising from reports? It is either the AGM is postponed or rather they could have become proactive and sent reports to clubs and ask them to send questions. Then we would take an hour answering questions, then another hour on elections,” the source said.
When asked what expectations are for the incoming leadership, the source said right now they do not need change, they need stability. Adding that they need people that could recover what is left of softball and piece it together.
“Imagine they are still doing the 2017-2018 audit, 2018-2019 is pending, 2019-2020 is pending and 2020-2021 is also pending. These audits could have been done under the guidance of the secretary-general, treasurer and president. It has been three years without an audit. We had so many expectations from Thamane but he failed us,” the source said.
The source added that even the much-anticipated league restructuring was not done but that was an expectation by the sponsor, BoFiNeT.
BSA secretary-general, Tsuna Makwa felt that their term was not bad as people want to put it. She explained that it was tough when they started because there was no handover from the previous committee.
“We took a long time to settle. Therefore, we tried our best to make things work. We changed many things for the better, especially the record-keeping and governance documents that we introduced.
I am aware that there was resistance from some managers, which was a phase that developed along the way. We also had support hence the motion of no confidence against us did not go through,” she said.
When asked about the proposed league restructure, Makwa said it was an obvious thing to happen because changes would not benefit all. Regarding her decision not to contest, Makwa said the secretary-general’s position is too operational and she no longer has time to serve softball. Meanwhile, competitions organiser, Macdonald Fologang told Mmegi Sport that he personally presented the league structure to all clubs and all went well. “They even asked questions that I answered well and some of them made valuable comments and I amended the report appropriately.
The main reason why we needed to restructure the league was a contractual matter with the current sponsor. BoFiNeT did not want to sponsor all the clubs and wanted us to reduce their number by two every year,” Fologang said. For his part, Pako Maforaga of Rail Giants said the AGM was long anticipated, but the biggest let down is the low turn out regarding campaigning teams.
When asked why the positions of vice president and PRO remain vacant, Maforaga said people want to criticise but never want to step up and fix things.
Other candidates: Nozibonela Payet (secretary-general), Same Molete (secretary-general), Bobby Khupe (technical development officer), Kenneth Kopano (technical development officer), Abel Mataboge (competitions organiser) and Puso Kgosietsile (treasurer).