How did this all start?

 Shapiro expressed concerns about the financial management of SARRAL at their Annual General Meeting in mid 2002. He struck an unexpected chord with dissatisfied members at the meeting and became the only director to ever be voted onto the SARRAL board by members, changing the dynamic in a self-perpetuating oligarchy.

The final straw came in April of 2004 when the board was presented with a Management Committee Report by then Financial Manager Kuselwa Mthethwa.  This report admitted what Shapiro had suspected: that the company was using royalties to fund itself . SARRAL’s own report quantified the amounts of composers’ money already illegally used and forecast that by 2005 the amount would be over R11 million.

On 2 June 2004, in an e-mail to Professor Peter Klatzow (who was SARRAL vice-chairman at that time) Kuselwa wrote:
"... we have already utilized some of the royalty receipts"

Professor Peter Klatzow, who was vice-chairman at that time commented to Shapiro in an e-mail: “The real question is how long can we keep going …it’s a disgrace that dedicated royalty money should have been used for management"

Despite this reponse from Klatzow, Shapiro failed to get any board co-operation, indeed, they supported management attempts to throw Shapiro out of the company as a member, which would have removed him as a director. "Taking no action would have made me complicit." said Shapiro. The liquidation action was launched in July 2004

During the court hearing in October 2009, when the Judge commented that Shapiro's action was an appropriate response in the circumstances, SARRAL’s counsel conceded that Shapiro had just cause and had been reasonable when initiating this liquidation action in 2004

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