Court challenge likely to force King Commission to resume

Paul Martin in Johannesburg.

Cricket corruption commissioner Edwin King could be facing another legal challenge -- by pro-democracy organisations and the broadcast news service Live Africa Broadcasting. The groups are to claim that the public is being denied the right to know more about the corruption, already in the process of being exposed by the King Commission into Cricket Match-fixing.

Live Africa's sister company, Live Africa Network News, last year got a High Court order forcing the Commission to allow its proceedings to be broadcast.

The litigants now want the High Court to order King to resume hearings. If so, ex-captain Hansie Cronje, and ex-cricket boss Dr Ali Bacher, are expected to be recalled and new witnesses examined. The Indian tapes or transcripts of Cronje's cell-phone discussions would also have been at the centre of the hearings.

Rediff.com has spoken exclusively to Hansie Cronje's lawyer, Leslie Sackstein. He claims he wants the hearings to go ahead -- and says the ex-judge has over-reacted to questions he (Sackstein) put to the commissioner.

"All I wanted to know was whether the judge believes he is legally allowed to conduct the hearing. It is in our interests that the hearings end -- but we also need to know that the whole hearings from start to finish will not suddenly be declared unconstitutional."

Sackstein told rediff.com that he had had two conversations with King where the ex-judge insisted he does have the right to continue holding the hearings. Then, in a letter, King suddenly seems to have changed his mind.

A few days ago the Commission issued this public statement:

"Whether or not the claim (that the Commission may not be headed by a judge) is valid, the public may now start to wonder whether the commission’s workings under King have been constitutional. It's an untenable situation and it won't be right for King to continue before it is cleared up," a statement released by the commission claimed.

That's only the latest twist in this bizarre saga. When, after months of a date was set for the commission to resume on 24 January, Cronje won a High Court ruling that both his lawyers had to be present at the case. Again, King lost the case and now owes Cronje's lawyers around 20,000 US dollars.

Sackstein said the stalling by the commission was unfair. "Here sits Cronje, who can make an enormous contribution by, among others, coaching children, but is not granted the opportunity to carry on with a normal life."

He added that the commission "has been buggering us around for seven months". He also accused the commission of "tardiness", "ineffectiveness" and "unreliability".

In the meanwhile Judge King has -- sort-of --admitted to a prize blunder. The King Commission in December, in an interim report, made recommendations on how to keep the sport clean. One of the recommendations was (on any normal reading of it) to tap telephone calls made by players. These recommendations were locally and internationally described as a huge over-reaction.

But now the Judge says that "certain media representatives" interpreted his recommendations wrongly. He does, however, concede that he could have contributed to this supposed misunderstanding.

According to King, his recommendations were only that particulars of telephone calls to and from players be made available to the United Cricket Board and not the contents of the calls. King said that the interim report should only have been seen as guideline for the UCB.

"Let us hope that the demand for such drastic measures will disappear in time."

Which is about as close to an admission of guilt that you will get from a 70-year-old who's used to getting a good deal more deference when he was ruling a Courtroom as Judge-President.

To conclude: It's not just money and judicial credibility that's at stake -- it’s the chance to get closer to the truth.

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