In a big announcement from SA Rugby on Tuesday, an impartial Enchantment Panel has upheld a disciplinary sanction of misconduct imposed on Zelt Marais, previously the president of the Western Province Rugby Soccer Union.

He had been charged with misconduct following numerous statements made in communications to SA Rugby members and in public boards in 2022 and 2024.

In upholding the sanction, Marais was suspended for 10 years from any and all positions within the South African Rugby Union (SARU), or another rugby physique, and from any and all rugby actions for breaching the SARU Code of Conduct.

TABLES HAVE TURNED ON ZELT MARAIS

The Panel mentioned it, and the Judicial Officer, had taken into consideration “the full lack of regret on the a part of the appellant (Zelt Marais), which continued proper as much as the attraction, his ongoing justification for his actions and in impact nonetheless claiming that he was absolutely entitled to say what he had mentioned on the idea that that what had been said was ‘the reality’.

“There had been no apology for his conduct, and particularly no public apology for his public remarks. There was ongoing lack of regret and each risk that he would proceed alongside this path until sanctioned within the method through which the Judicial Officer determined to sanction his conduct.”

The Impartial Enchantment Panel’s 61-page discovering held that the sanction imposed by the Judicial Officer was “nicely motivated, amongst different issues for the gravity of the costs, the truth that the acts of misconduct have been ongoing, by a really senior workplace bearer of a member union who was nicely conscious of his duties and duties in direction of SARU.”

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