Africa-Press – South-Africa. SA Rugby will have to face the Parliamentary Sports Portfolio committee on Tuesday with an update on the Jurie Roux saga top of the agenda.
Roux’s matter is something SA Rugby has steadfastly refused to speak about publicly, with the organisation’s president Mark Alexander reaffirming that stance at the Carling Champions Cup launch two weeks ago.
“As I have said before, I don’t talk about that issue in the press. We are exchanging documents between legal teams and I don’t want to talk about that,” Alexander said at the time.
“Please be patient, we are not going to be pushed by the public making decisions for us. We are going down a process and the things we are doing could be risky, we need to follow proper due process.
“We are busy with it and will announce it when it happens and we are ready. There are things that are happening and I can’t talk about it, unfortunately.”
On Tuesday, however, Alexander is expected to be pushed for answers from government.
Roux, who has been SA Rugby chief executive officer since 2010, is facing an R37-million claim from his former employer, the University of Stellenbosch, stemming from his time as a senior director in the finance department from 2002 until 2010.
After an investigation uncovered that he had moved monies without permission to the university’s rugby club, Roux has been engaged in a long-standing battle with the tertiary institution that has won two arbitration awards against him on 23 December 2020 and 7 December 2021 respectively.
In SA Rugby’s previous Sports Portfolio Committee appearance on 16 March, Alexander maintained it was going to be difficult to punish Roux based on previous transgressions.
However, the Roux matter is now at the Western Cape High Court where it will be heard later this year, with SA Rugby having appointed a sub-committee consisting of Louis von Zeuner, Sam Ngumeni, and Mary-Anne Musekiwa to look into the matter while consulting with legal experts Michael Katz and Wim Trengrove.
“It must be remembered that this happened with his previous employer and not with SA Rugby,” Alexander said.
“It is not a cut and dried matter like [if] he worked for SA Rugby, there are other options we had to take and we have to follow due processes.
“We’ll wait for our attorneys to come back to us and we’ll follow their advice, because it wouldn’t be a normal suspension.
“There have been similar instances elsewhere, but you can’t suspend a person for something that happened in a different organisation.
“There were no allegations when he was employed.”
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