D-day for GU factions
Kabelo Boranabi | Friday March 3, 2017 15:20
The brawl started after an elective general meeting held in August 2015, where Rapula Okaile was voted chairman. A group of supporters represented by attorney Uyapo Ndadi then challenged the legitimacy of the executive committee led by Okaile.
The group argues the elective meeting was unconstitutional, as delegates did not form the two-thirds majority as per the club’s constitution. They sought the court’s intervention to rule the committee null and void. The group through its lawyer told the court that a quorum was not formed at the meeting as the 290 attendees did not form two-thirds of the 900 registered members as per the constitution.
Represented by Lore Morapedi, the current committee argued that there is no evidence to prove that the meeting was unconstitutional hence the committee was legitimately voted in office. “In the absence of evidence on the numbers, we cannot stand here wasting the court’s time,” Morapedi told the court in September last year.
With the two parties failing to agree to settle out of court, the infighting led to the departure of investor Nicholas Zackhem who later returned to the club as a sponsor, as the club was facing serious financial crisis.
The crisis prompted players to boycott training due to unpaid salaries in June. However, the issue was sorted out after the return of Zackhem and the arrival of mobile phone company, Mobicel as the main sponsor.
Judge Dambe in the last hearing slammed the two factions for taking football matters to a court of law. She said it is a growing trend that clubs fail to use their constitutions to resolve matters as they resort to the courts’ intervention.
Local football has recently been rocked by power wrangles in the clubs, with most of the cases being taken to the Court of Law.
On March 9, the four year long impasse of the Township Rollers factions would be heard.
The court had previously ruled that all the affairs of the club should be run by a Society rather than a commercial entity, Township Holdings, which is owned by Shah and Somerset Gobuiwang.
However, the fracas would not be ending anytime soon as the group led by former executive committee members has challenged that Shah is still running the company rather than the Society’s executive committee as per the court’s ruling last year. Meanwhile, the power issue at Mochudi Centre Chiefs was put out as the fighting groups have since found common ground.