World Athletics Orders Athletics South Africa to Remove Its Suspended President

World Athletics has told Athletics South Africa (ASA) to carry out the removal of its suspended president, James Moloi, “without delay” and to adopt a new constitution within six months, or have its case sent to the World Athletics Council for possible sanctions. The instructions are in a three-page letter sent from Monaco on Thursday, which IOL reported on Monday.

Moloi, 59, has been suspended since October 2025. In findings dated Oct. 6, a three-member disciplinary panel chaired by retired judge Basheer Waglay unanimously found him guilty on two of four charges: using ASA assets without authorization, and putting purchases on the federation’s card in April 2024, the first month he was paid a new R18,000 ($1,100) presidential allowance. The other two charges fell away. ASA had no approved card policy for him to break, and officials had kept topping up the card each time he went over its R15,000 ($940) monthly limit. A forensic audit by Forvis Mazars had found 399 transactions worth more than R300,000 ($19,000) between May 2023 and April 2024, and the charges cited liquor, clothing, groceries, fuel and a cash advance.

Moloi denied every charge, insisted each purchase was federation business, and has repaid the R24,841.95 ($1,550) spent that April. The panel was unconvinced, writing that he had used the card “like his own personal slush card,” Daily Maverick reported, and recommended he lose both the presidency and his board seat.

Moloi had been re-elected to a second four-year term in May 2025, five months before he was suspended, and it took two hearings to reach a verdict. The first, in December, ended when its lone presiding officer threw the case out, because the suspension letter had been signed by an acting chief executive who was himself named in the audit. Plans to bring Moloi back then stalled with the board split over them, the Sunday Times reported in June. A review by Zakhele Dlamini, president of the Southern African Confederation of Athletics, concluded that hearing had broken ASA’s own rules and World Athletics’ requirement for independent panels, and ASA’s council voted to start over.

Dlamini also visited South Africa on Sept. 2 and 3 for World Athletics and the Confederation of African Athletics (CAA), and what he found there drives the rest of the letter, which chief executive Jon Ridgeon signed, according to Business Day. He described officials who sit on provincial and national bodies at the same time, a board too divided to make decisions together, and open questions over who had the power to act and whether some resolutions even stood. World Athletics said it was “particularly concerned these issues reflect structural weaknesses in ASA’s governance framework.”

ASA now has just a month to send World Athletics and the CAA a schedule, six months to adopt a revised constitution, and three months after that to hold fresh elections under it, with Dlamini watching both. ASA’s current draft is an improvement, World Athletics said, but it still wants limits on how long officials can serve, guaranteed places for athletes, a gender balance requirement, one vote per person with only accredited delegates voting, and independent bodies to run elections, discipline and financial oversight, all answering to a council that holds the final say.

If ASA misses the deadline or stalls the process on purpose, the Council takes up the case under Article 13 of the World Athletics constitution. Suspending ASA’s membership is one option, and the Council can also fine a federation, withhold its grants or bar its athletes and officials from competition.

Members of the Comrades Marathon Association voted in August against rejoining KwaZulu-Natal Athletics, the provincial body that tied the race to ASA, a split Marathon Handbook covered at the time. ASA has since said it will not sanction the centenary Comrades Marathon on June 13, 2027, which has opened entries without asking for an ASA license. In May, ASA’s acting president, John Mathane, said the federation “will not stand aside” while athletes went unpaid by provincially run races, the Soweto Marathon among them, according to Daily Maverick. The winners of last November’s Soweto race, whose wait Marathon Handbook first reported that month, are still owed their prize money.

As of Monday, ASA had not acted on the panel’s recommendation, eNCA reported. Its schedule for the new constitution is due to World Athletics by mid-November, and the six-month window closes in mid-April, two months before the 100th Comrades.