As speculated, Cindy Nkomo has been appointed by the BSA board as acting CEO.

Nkomo serves as a director of operations. She was officially employed as such by the same board which has now deemed it fit to appoint her to the hot seat that remained vacant after Tsholofelo Lejaka resigned early this week.

Nkomo’s appointment was confirmed by BSA today.

A statement attributed to chairman Peter Ngatane reads: “To ensure continuity and sustenance of institutional memory, the board met on 5 August and resolved to appoint Ms Cindy Nkomo as acting CEO with effect from the 6 August 2020.  Ms Nkomo will work with the existing team of staff within BSA until a new CEO has been appointed by the minister of sports, arts and culture. Ms Nkomo and team will, working under the overall strategic leadership of the board, drive the execution of the proximate tasks outlined in the foregoing. “

Nkomo said: “I am obviously honored to have been given the opportunity to take this position and I don’t take this appointment lightly. I will rely on the board of BSA and my office for support and guidance. But I want to thank Mr Lejaka for the support he has given me since I joined BSA in 2017. With his operational experience, he gave me a leeway to drive the operations; his guidance has been a driving force to me and his patience when things did not move as fast I would have wanted them to did not go unnoticed.”

Regarding the resignation of Lejaka, BSA said: “Boxing South Africa (BSA) confirms the resignation of Mr Tsholofelo Lejaka as its CEO.  Mr Lejaka joined BSA four years ago.  During his tenure, he helped herald administrative stability, improved accountability and consolidated and sustained stakeholder relationship management within and beyond the boxing fraternity.  He leaves behind an organisation that has qualitatively shifted from where it was with a renewed orientation towards the primary necessity of building capabilities to center boxing promotion and development as the nucleus of BSA. The board extends its gratitude to Mr Lejaka for his stewardship and exemplary service to the boxing community.  We wish him success in his new journey."

The board added: “BSA, at its previous three board meetings, had reflected on the immediate, short-term and long-term implications of Covid-19 to the sport of boxing.  In appreciating the current conditions, it resolved that our response to Covid-19 must lay a solid cornerstone for the long-term sustainability of the people’s sport as a vibrant, attractive, artistic, innovative and dynamic sport of the people capable of contributing both to social cohesion and nation building. 

“We had therefore committed to use this difficult period to reconnect with the fraternity, prepare the fraternity for the resumption of safe training  through the re-opening of gymnasia, recalibrate the Women in Boxing programme, heighten the modernisation of the administration of boxing as a sport obtaining in a world connected by technology. All these plans form part of the BSA’s Annual Plan. These attendant tasks, including the on-going process of the annual audit by the auditor-general will not lose momentum, they constitute a core of our response to the destructive Covid-19 pandemic. We have got to work determinedly to get the boxers back into the ring so that they can do what they know best – the art of boxing.”