Clubs Walk Out of Rugby Agm

31 May 2011

THE annual general meeting of the Namibia Rugby union ended in limbo on Saturday when a group of rugby clubs led by Western Suburbs and Wanderers walked out of the meeting.

The clubs tabled a vote of no confidence in NRU president Buks Bok and his executive committee, but when the voting ended deadlocked at 8-8, amidst claims of vote rigging, they walked out of the meeting.

Only 17 of the registered 23 clubs were present, while some clubs sent proxies but they were rejected. Eventually the vote ended in a tie but president Bock then gave a casting vote in favour of themselves.

Western Suburbs president Corry Mensah told Namibia Sport that the voting was rigged from the start.

“One person who voted against us did not have the mandate according to a fellow member of his club who was present, while the validity to reject certain proxies is in serious doubt,” Mensah said.

“The proxies were initially accepted to properly constitute the meeting, but afterwards at the voting stage they were rejected. Surely the whole meeting should therefore be illegitimate because it was not properly constituted,” he said.

Mensah said the ‘state of affairs of the NRU is in a mess’ and that the concerned clubs rejected the financial statements.

According to the auditors’ report the NRU did not maintain adequate accounting records for expenditure, while they could not satisfy themselves to the validity of expenditures totalling N$558 948.

Mensah said that his club Western Suburbs requested documentation from the NRU in 2008 to do their own audit, but they were ignored. He added that he communicated the ‘unacceptable state of affairs’ to Cliffie Booysen, the regional manager of the International Rugby Board, as well as to the IRB head office in 2010.

“We also did not give the NRU the mandate to transfer the National Rugby Stadium to Government, because we were not prepared to give them any mandate in general. They can no longer be trusted with the affairs of rugby in this country,” Mensah concluded.

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