Last night, the Comrades Marathon Association held an emotion-charged special general meeting in Pietermaritzburg to address widespread concerns among runners. Green number holder Rory Steyn invested R8 000 to attend in person. He reports on what went down at the three-and-a-half-hour SGM with BizNews editor Alec Hogg.
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Extended transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Alec hogg – 00:10
Comrades Marathon Association had its special general meeting yesterday. Rory Steyn is just back home in Johannesburg, having flown back from KZN and joins us now for a, well, a breaking update, Rory. Thanks for giving the members of the Buznews sports channel, premium sports channel on WhatsApp, a blow by a blow account.
Alec Hogg – 00:35
But maybe from your perspective, why was it so important that you went all the way to Maritzburg, took time out of your schedule to attend the special general meeting?
Rory Steyn – 00:50
Yeah, Alec, good morning to the tribe and to the Business Sports Channel. So to answer that question, why would I spend 8000 rand to fly down, hire a car, rent accommodation and attend that special general meeting?
Rory Steyn – 01:02
Very simply because the Comrades Marathon is a national treasure and it’s too important to allow it to slip into the hands of those who would seek not to serve it, even though they are elected to do so, but rather themselves and their own agendas and more importantly, their own pockets.
Alec Hogg – 01:25
How many others traveled there? In other words, how many people were at the meeting roughly? And did you get a sense that there were others who came from out of town?
Rory Steyn – 01:32
Oh yeah, I’ve just got back with an old mate of mine, Rich Van Escaaf. He did the same thing, spent the same amount of money. And there were many that either drove or flew down from Joburg or up from Cape Town. There were two that flew in from the UK who are of similar mind.
Alec Hogg – 01:50
Why was it so important? Why did people even come from the UK and indeed from Cape Town and Johannesburg to Peter Maritzburg to participate in this? Okay. So.
Rory Steyn – 02:01
Okay. So. You can become a member of the Comrades Marathon Association. If you are a runner or a volunteer to Comrades. And it costs a whole hundred rand per annum. Now, when I first joined, probably 10 years ago, it was 20 rand to join up as a CMA member. And you can obviously only vote at an AGM, which elects the board, if you’re a paid up member. Money isn’t the issue here, Alec.
So this SGM, a special general meeting that I flew down for yesterday, last night, was called by the members, not the board. That’s why it’s a special general meeting and it’s all done in terms of the constitution. Then the president of KwaZulu Natal Athletics tried to throw a spanner in the works and he made a directive that in order to vote at the SGM, you had to be domiciled in KwaZulu Natal.
Rory Steyn – 02:52
which is as ludicrous as it sounds. And fortunately, there are some really wonderful athletes or people who have a similar concern that I do, who are advocates. And it was taken to the Natal branch of the High Court the day before yesterday. And it was, of course, overthrown. It is entirely unconstitutional. So they wanted to prevent a majority or a quorum or whatever was required constitutionally to pitch up at that SGM.
and vote on the seven points upon which the SGM was called. Now that happened. So you asked the question, how many people were there? Well, the number fluctuated as people came in and came out, but at the beginning there were about 410, of which I’m guessing 300 odd were people, like-minded people who had made the effort to get there and make their presence felt. And then there were about 100 of the so-called.
bused in delegates, but they had very good scrutineers. You had to check in, show your ID, and prove that you were a paid up member of the CMA before you were allowed in. Then you were given a wristband that you could raise in the air when vote counting happened, so that people could see you were a paid up member. And if you weren’t, you weren’t allowed to vote. Well, I’ll say a few things. The first thing I’ll say is that it was a very necessary exercise, and excuse me for the name dropping, but.
Rory Steyn – 04:14
Bruce Fordyce was there, he called me this morning as I was waiting to board my plane, he’s on a later flight, and said that we as the members of the CMA need to look at ourselves a little bit as well, because we were, some of us were asleep at the wheel and I include myself in that. What I mean by that, Alec, is that if you are a member of the CMA, you hold the ideals, the history, the ethos and the legacy of that great race dear, then it’s incumbent upon us.
to know who’s elected to represent us on that board. And we just kind of went with it and think, yeah, these guys, they’re not there, they’re gonna do a good job, they’ve always done a good job. And that’s not the way to do it. So it was a necessary exercise to go through. And like Graham Smith, when he was captain of South Africa, said when they kind of like introduced that song about protea fire, the Umlilo song, the protea, our national flower, requires a felt fire to…
burn off the dross, burn off the old root stock, and it’s the heat from that fire that actually causes the bulb of the protea to germinate and to bring forth those new beautiful blossoms. And I think we went through a bit of that. And everybody that I spoke to after that meeting last night at breakfast this morning on the plane flying home, everybody seems to be of like mind, Alec. So back to your question, 410 odd people were there.
Rory Steyn – 05:40
which meant that you needed 206 for a majority plus one to carry certain votes. But when it came to changing the constitution, you needed a two-thirds majority. And there was only one and it was the final item on the agenda, item seven, which was, believe it or not, to call for a change to the constitution permitting members that were not present physically at AGMs, in other words, online attendance.
A, they could attend as members in good standing online, and B, they could vote. So that required a two-thirds majority. And by the time we reached that point, and it took about three and a half, maybe four hours, I mean, we were very close to 10:30, but the point is that once we got to that, it carried unanimously. There was absolutely no objection. I don’t even think there was one dissenting vote Alec. So where we sit now is that members
Rory Steyn – 06:39
in good standing may vote at AGMs and attend AGMs digitally, whether they live in the UK, South Africa, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape or Timbuktu, we can now vote, you know, it’s 2024, there’s not a meeting on Earth, which was the point that I made yesterday, that doesn’t have some kind of a hybrid meeting structure where you can have people attending in person and people attending online.
So now what we’ve got, Alec, is we’ve got a big fat wake up call to all of us, to the board. But I think they got a little bit of a ‘skrik’ because they see that when the members decide to stand up and be counted and to open their mouths like we did, they need to make sure that they are on the right side of history. And I have to give credit to the comrades chairperson, Nkondisi. He was absolutely brilliant the way he handled that meeting.
Right up front, he appealed for decorum and reasonable behavior to prevail. And I promise you, Alec, it was like that. I was actually very proud of we South Africans, the way that when we do come together, people feel passionate about things. And there was a lot of passion on both sides of many of those initial agenda points that was in evidence there. But he handled it brilliantly. People behaved themselves. People voted.
Rory Steyn – 08:05
People applauded when they wanted to support things. So there was a lot of passion and emotion in there because that’s why we called the meeting because we are passionate about comrades. It was a, in my view, a very worthwhile exercise and a wake up call for all of us.
Alec Hogg – 08:20
So R8,000 well spent from your perspective.
Rory Steyn – 08:23
Absolutely.
Alec Hogg – 08:29
We did speak to Stuart Mann, the running man as his blog is titled.yesterday, he gave us some good insights, but he was also saying that there’s a lot of corruption that was going on. And he was of the impression that two of the board members who were corrupt would be ejected at the special general meeting. What happened there?
Rory Steyn – 08:44
Right. So those were agenda items one and two. So the first person was the vanilla gate WhatsApp message sender, and so Kayla that’s where the most opposition there. There was a lot of attempts to have that agenda item removed, or say it wasn’t fair and where’s the evidence, and this kind of thing backwards and forwards. But when the lawyers got up on their back feet and pointed out that it’s the prerogative of the members to call the SGM, and the very first thing we did was agree that the agenda as it was submitted was the agenda of the day. So you couldn’t change anything. So the very first item was…
having her removed as a board member. And just before the vote happened, she was not there, but her representative stood up and said that in light of this, she has asked me to tender her resignation. So in came the resignation and she was out. The second item on the agenda was the other board member, Mr. Isaac Nguyenha, purportedly having made racist comments at a board meeting and in the presence of the race operations manager.
Rory Steyn – 09:55
and there was not sufficient proof to carry that. Personally, Alec, I abstained from that vote because I did not think that there was sufficient evidence to vote him off. We were not asked to vote on those allegations that Stuart made of kleptocracy, of breaking open locks on bar fridges and of freeloading the Mr. Tinfoil stuff and carrying out food and drink. We were not asked to vote on that.
Had we been asked to vote on that, I dare say I may have voted differently, but I chose to abstain because what became very clear, that was a long debate, maybe an hour and a half. Emotions were running a little high, and it was tooting and throwing, and there was a lack of understanding of the actual legal basis upon which the SGM was called. People were saying, where’s the proof? It’s not a kangaroo court. And I found those comments to be valid. So on the matter of whether Mr. Nguyenha made a decision racist comments.
It turned out that he did not make those comments. They were actually attributed to another board member. So how can you now vote a guy off? That was not, in my view, reasonable. And so I abstained, and he was not removed. And then the others all came in. They were that an independent panel would appoint the next race operations manager, that an independent commission of inquiry would look at this whole thing of the community marshals and how they were paid.
Rory Steyn – 11:22
and whether there was malfeasance there, almost certainly there was. That was passed with the amendment that a retired judge would chair that commission of inquiry into those community marshals. And a very good point was made there, Alec, because those community marshals seem to be limited to an 18 kilometer stretch, very remote stretch of the route that goes through Hammersdale, in Taunga and Pumalanga, not the province, the area in KZN.
Norrie Williamson, a well-known race organizer, a man with a lot of experience, and he’s also from Kayserland, he made the point that that commission needs to look forward, not just look back at any malfeasance that happened, but look forward as to how we can better utilize all of our communities, not just those communities on that 18-kilometer stretch of the Comrades route. And it was a very valid point for which he almost got a standing ovation from all quarters.
Rory Steyn – 12:18
And the point that he made was any race anywhere in the world, any modern race has huge community involvement. And why wouldn’t we in comrades have the involvement of our communities? That’s something that I fully support, Alec. And we need to interrogate how to do that better.
Alec Hogg – 12:34
That sounds very positive. The kind of conversations that went down there. But what about the former Comrade Marathon Association manager operations or race manager, Anne Ashworth? Was her name brought up?
Rory Steyn – 12:47
And there was initially one of the items on the agenda of last night’s SGM would have addressed exactly that. But Anne chose to withdraw that agenda item because she settled with the Comrades Marathon Association. So that was not on the agenda. No. Anne did speak. She spoke very passionately. But where the matter stands now, Alec, certainly as I understand it coming out of last night, is that a new and it could well be that she…chooses to apply for that position, I don’t know, but a new race operations manager will be appointed. And one of the resolutions that was passed at last night’s SGM was that an independent panel consisting of industry experts would deliberate on the applications for that position and make that appointment. So there’s a whole, I think there’s a new level of due diligence that has come in now, again, a positive outcome.
Alec Hogg – 13:44
And transparency as well. Barry Holland is a name that is well known amongst Comrades Marathon members. I believe he also participated in the meeting. Just tell us a bit about him.
Rory Steyn – 13:54
Well, I only met Barry for the first time last night when Ford has introduced me because they are the two of them, these two medallas, both hobbling around there on crutches, having both had knee replacements very recently. So yeah, but Barry is a well revered member of the entire comrades community because he has the most number of comrades finishes. I mean, imagine staying healthy enough and injured enough to be able to run 50 comrades. That is a quintuple green number. I mean, the man is a legend. There’s one guy called Louis Marcein who’s one comrades behind him. So maybe next year, Louis joins him as the second person to run 50 comrades. I mean, that is extraordinary beyond extraordinary. And I guess I can’t speak for Barry Alec because I don’t know him.
Rory Steyn – 14:39
I know of him and his reputation precedes him. But, you know, he also spoke and whenever he did so, he made sense. He’s one of those people like many of us who went down there, who just felt that it was that important that this SGMA needed to be called, that we needed to deal with the matters on the table and on the agenda. And look, Alec, at the end of the day, what everybody, I believe, wanted, made the effort to go down there, is we want that the elected leaders and custodians of the comrades marathon, which is the board, to do their job and not use it as some kind of an ATM or any other way to enrich themselves. And if they’re not going to do that, then we are going to call them to account. And that’s what we did. And I’m proud to say that we did that. And let’s hope now.
Rory Steyn – 15:34
And I mean, hope is not a strategy. And, you know, I’m in the security game and that’s a famous cliche in my industry. That hope is not a strategy, but I can promise you that if a board member that was there last night or years about it, didn’t get a wake up call, then they shouldn’t be on the board.
Alec Hogg – 15:50
And is it likely now that you are going to be able to call meetings remotely? In other words, everybody can participate. You’ve had this wake up call that there will be a different board given.the amount of very bad publicity that the current board has been subjected to?
Rory Steyn – 16:13
Yes, so the first thing I would say is it’s very sad to me as somebody who loves that race. It’s a national treasure, I think I’ve probably said that before, but I mean, the Comrades is unique. You know, it’s known as hashtag the ultimate human race, and it is. I personally have run a marathon on all seven continents of our planet, including Antarctica.
There is no race like comrades, nothing like it even remotely compares to the Comrades Marathon. That said, it’s also the history of the comrades that appeals to someone like me. Because remember, it was started by a World War I veteran called Vic Clapham to honor the ultimate sacrifice made by his comrades, soldiers in arms in the First World War, to rid the world of an evil tyranny.
And he said, I’ve got to institute an event that is physically tough enough to do justice to their sacrifice. That’s what the comrades marathon is. It’s about fallen comrades. And that’s important to me. But if the board who are the custodians of everything that I’ve spoken about in the last minute or two don’t do their job, that’s what they were elected to do. Then the alumni of the comrades who would typically be the green numbers, the people that have invested at least 10 runs into the
Rory Steyn – 17:32
And there must have been thousands, if not 10,000, finishers in that room last night. Then we must stand up and be counted and call that board to account. So I don’t think that we are ever going to have this kind of malaise again. And I’m an optimist. Of course, I could be wrong. But I think that we’re going to be OK. And that the new board, and that was your question, is it going to be a completely new board? Well, I hope not. I think that the current chairperson and deputy chairperson and previous chairs like Cheryl Wynn, who is herself a previous winner, a previous comrades ladies champion, you know, they need to remain involved. We can’t lose that intellectual property. It’s all very well having new brooms sweeping clean but sometimes new brooms don’t know what they’re sweeping.
So I think what we would look for, what I would certainly look for, Alec, speaking purely as me as a comrades marathon association member, is I would look for a board that is a hybrid of the good guys on the current board and the bad guys must get out. They must duck. We don’t need them and they must move on. If they’re there to serve themselves, they must get lost. So a hybrid of the good guys and some people who really have the interests of this national treasure. I thought that’s who we want.
Alec Hogg – 18:59
Rory Steyn, a Green Number Comrades member. That means he’s had at least 10 finishes in the Comrades Marathon. Well known to the business community.as the bodyguard of Madiba when he was president in South Africa. And as you can hear clearly very passionate about the comrades association. And I’m Alec Hogg fromBizNews.com.
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