Former Safa Cape vice-president Vernon Seymour, banned after a sexual harassment scandal, wants back in the game.
|||Cape Town - Former South African Football Association (Safa) Cape Town vice-president Vernon Seymour, who was banned from football for life following a sexual harassment scandal, has turned to the Western Cape High Court in his bid to return to the sport.
However, Safa threw him a curve ball this week when it went to the same court, asking for the case to be kicked out because Seymour knew full well that he should use internal Safa processes to resolve the issue.
The matter came briefly before Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe on Friday, who postponed it to September 10 this year and gave the parties time to file further papers.
Seymour was banned after being found guilty of sexually harassing a female intern at Safa offices in November 2013, allegations he has denied.
He was also charged with bringing the organisation into disrepute, and for allegedly falsely accusing Safa’s Cape Town general secretary of lying.
In Seymour’s application, he suggested that the sexual harassment allegations were part of a campaign to “humiliate and eliminate” him, after he was nominated to Safa’s national executive committee.
The charges were laid about two months after his nomination, he said in an affidavit.
Seymour said he resigned from Safa Cape Town in September last year because he had already experienced “one of the worst years of my life in the game, and could not see any good reason why I should continue”.
However, disciplinary proceedings against him continued and, the following month, the life ban was imposed.
But Seymour said the fact that he resigned meant he was not a member of Safa Cape Town, and so not subject to its jurisdiction.
He alleged that the letter requesting that disciplinary proceedings be initiated was written without a mandate from Safa Cape Town, and claimed that there was no resolution from Safa’s national executive committee.
In addition, he submitted that Safa Cape Town’s statutes provided that only the general council had the power to suspend or expel members.The recommendation that he be banned for life was not tabled for consideration at general council meetings, he said.
Seymour also alleged that other Safa Cape Town members had similar allegations levelled against them, but were never summoned to appear before a disciplinary committee.
“The fact that the members concerned were not charged clearly demonstrated that I was targeted and victimised by Safa Cape Town and by Safa national,” he said.
But Safa said the court should dismiss Seymour’s application. Alternatively, it wants the application stayed until Seymour has exhausted internal mechanisms.
In an affidavit, Safa Cape Town general secretary Nomonde Dlakana said the constitutions of Safa and Safa Cape Town provided for a detailed internal process, in terms of which disputes should be resolved without resorting to the courts.
Internally, Seymour had three options open to him – appealing to the national appeals board, referring the dispute to the Safa arbitration tribunal, and appealing to the court of arbitration for sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Dlakana said Seymour was an experienced football administrator, who had served at the highest levels of football administration in South Africa. “There can therefore be no excuse for him having failed to make use of the Safa structures to resolve his dispute,” he said.
Dlakana also pointed out that Seymour resigned as a member of Safa Cape Town.
While this did not stop the disciplinary process from continuing, it deprived Seymour of any right to challenge the decisions made by means of a court review.
Weekend Argus
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