- NSA president Cecilia Molokwane seemed unfazed about the legal threat sent to her federation by trade union Solidarity over the sport’s race regulations.
- Solidarity’s Hennie Bierman addressed a letter to Molokwane saying NSA’s race regulations were "irrational".
- Netball was under a barrage of criticism during the height of the Black Lives Matter conversation in sport.
Netball South Africa (NSA) president Cecilia Molokwane seemed unfazed on Monday about the legal threat sent to her federation by trade union Solidarity over the sport’s race regulations.
Molokwane said the governing netball federation would not respond to trade union Solidarity’s legal letter until their council met to discuss the issue.
On 6 November, Solidarity’s Hennie Bierman addressed a letter to Molokwane saying NSA’s race regulations were "irrational".
This came after the Mpumalanga Sunbirds were disqualified for failing to adhere to the regulations during their clash with the Kingdom Queens, in the Telkom Netball League’s Division 2 final last month.
"[We are] of the view that the rules are irrational, damaging to the sport of Netball, and most importantly, to the players, coaching and management staff," Bierman wrote.
"The TNL tournament rules are on its own ambiguous in that no rational benchmark is set to determine the ‘target system’."
Molokwane, however, said they had procedures to follow before they could engage Solidarity on their threat.
"You can take us to court and do whatever but at the end of the day we will still have to go to the very same council and say, ‘Solidarity is taking us to court, what do we do?’" she said.
"We cannot spend money on legal matters. We will only answer that letter only when we’ve gone to council.
"We are not going to jump because of them. We have procedures to follow. We have a constitution to follow and it should be a council resolution like many other legal things we have to deal with.
"We are not going to do anything and we haven’t even responded. We will take the letter to council and go through our procedures, as we did with the AfriForum issue."
Molokwane said she was concerned that people outside netball were trying to influence the sport in a negative way and that it was up to their own council to decide whether their system was fit or not for the sport.
"My concern is that there are people outside of netball thinking they can come into netball and threaten us, giving us legal letters and whatever," said Molokwane.
"The council of Netball South Africa will decide whether the rules suit them or not. At the end of the day, they are the people that play netball.
"They are the people with the players and they will decide what is best for the players in the country."
Molokwane added that NSA, which was under a barrage of criticism during the height of the Black Lives Matter conversation in South African sport, her federation was working hard to ensure redress.
However, she suspected foul elements were trying to destabilise the organisation ahead of the 2023 Netball World Cup in Cape Town.
"We are still trying to fix the wrongs and injustices of the past and we can’t do that in a day," Molokwane said.
"People are expecting so many miracles from us, the executive, and I don’t know why. There’s only seven of us but we are working and we do netball because of the passion and love we have for it.
"People are trying to destabilise us. Is it not a plan to make sure we don’t host the World Cup?"