Picture: Tony Rivalland, chairperson of SANTA (Candiese Lenferna Photography)
The following press release has been sent out by the South African National Trainers Association (SANTA) in response to the open letter sent out by former NHA Chairperson Susan Rowett:
As the initiator of the Special General Meeting (“SGM”) scheduled for 19 November 2025, the South African National Trainers Association (“SANTA”) believe it incumbent to respond to the misguided, distorted, malicious and disingenuous diatribe emanating from the pen of the former chair of the NHA, Susan Rowett (‘Rowett”).
Whilst we do not intend to deal with each and every allegation made by Rowett, and we have no doubt that the Operators (Race Coast and 4Racing), whom have been much maligned and defamed by her will be similarly responding, this should not be construed as any admission as to the correctness thereof, which is emphatically denied, but expressly reserve the right to do so in an appropriate forum in due course, if deemed necessary. We shall therefore focus for now on a few vitally important falsehoods. In so doing, we shall try and avoid duplication of the various succinct points raised by Mr Greg Bortz, in his personal erudite and pertinent response to Rowett, the content of which we wholeheartedly support and endorse.
1. The Operators, as well as SANTA, all had independent legal teams who worked in conjunction with each other specifically to ensure the independence and autonomy of the NHA as a regulatory body. This was at the forefront of the amended Constitution. It is imperative to note that in terms of the current Constitution, the NHA only have two representatives on the Nominations Committee (“NOMCO”) and interestingly which they had no objection to prior
hereto. In the initial draft, we reduced that to one – they shouldn’t have any – because in the ordinary course of any business, shareholders appoint directors to boards. Rowett wants the National Board to appoint their own so where is the independence in that? In order to address their complaints we reverted to two NHA appointees and removed the owners rep on the basis that both Operators reps and the SANTA rep are all owners anyway, and every single director of the interim NHA Board (bar obviously the CEO) is also an owner, so it’s not as if owners are not being represented on either the NHA Board or NOMCO, as Rowett mischievously tries to imply in her blatant attempt to inflame and antagonize owners.
2. Ask yourself this. Were it not for the decided lack of confidence in the NHA widely regarded in the industry as being allegedly incompetent, vindictive, and negligent, with wasteful expenditure, especially in regard to legal costs in excess of R10m per season, and with a zero lack of accountability as the regulator of our sport, would we now be seeking to implement an entirely new Constitution, solely for their benefit and obviously by association, for the benefit of all stakeholders? Rowett has hardly had a successful tenure as chair and has in fact been an abject failure with no track record of any meaningful change, hence why we find ourselves at this crossroad today.
3. The major changes in the Constitution have all been fully substantiated in a Rationale Document which has accompanied the proposed new Constitution and which is freely available on the NHA website.
4. What is both self-evident and ironic, is the coming together of the entire industry in support of this proposal, in both Operators, SANTA which also represents both jockey associations on NOMCO, the ROA, and the TBA, all in unification for the first time in our racing history. Further, the current interim NHA Board, under the new chair Mark Currie, who has sadly inherited a dysfunctional organization left in total disarray by Rowett, has endorsed and supported the Resolutions, all of this versus the plaintive bleat of a disgruntled former chair and director of the
NHA (and a few of her hand-picked proxies) who has lost control over an entity she viewed as her own personal fiefdom. We must additionally point out, that the SGM automatically triggers the resignation of the entire NHA Board, and we would submit that Rowett, knowing that she had reached the end of the road and would not be re-appointed by NOMCO, promptly resigned to avoid potential embarrassment and then proceeded to attempt to scupper the entire process in her own ostensibly power-hungry self-serving interests.
5. In finality, this is not about any takeover or capture, but the adoption only of a more workable, user-friendly, and adaptable constitution in order to make the NHA more independent and to reduce exorbitant costs in a seriously lossmaking industry all for the benefit and betterment of the entire horseracing fraternity.
We accordingly implore ALL MEMBERS to vote “YES” in favour of, and in support of the
proposed Resolutions.
Tony Rivalland
Chair SANTA
