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/ 21 December 2006
How does one begin to capture the face of South African football in 2006? While the unfolding story of the 2010 Soccer World Cup has tended to dominate the news, the enduring shortcomings of the domestic game — football authorities’ inability to create viable support structures — continue to blight some of its well-intentioned initiatives.
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/ 1 December 2006
A new player has emerged on the perennially dysfunctional landscape that is South African football. Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhenkesi Stofile has always been vocal and contemptuous of the way the South African Football Association (Safa) administers the game.
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/ 17 November 2006
The Department of Foreign Affairs has laid charges of misconduct against its former ambassador to Brazil Mbulelo Rakwena for allegedly contravening the foreign service code. Rakwena is to appear before the department’s internal disciplinary committee before the end of the month. It is not yet clear what the indictments against him are and he has not yet been suspended.
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/ 17 November 2006
Delays in moving the administration of Bafana Bafana to a professional body such as the South African Football Association’s (Safa) commercial wing are exacting a price. Safa further tarnished its public image this week with the indecision over whether the Nelson Mandela Challenge Cup would go ahead.
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/ 10 November 2006
For months the South African Football Association (Safa) has been talking about a ”turn-around strategy for Bafana Bafana” and a ”2010 vision”. Wednesday’s Nelson Mandela Inauguration match against Egypt in London is the last time the national team will get together this year and Safa’s two concepts are in danger of being exposed as semantic posturing.
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/ 3 November 2006
Nine months after the South African Football Association (Safa) decided to form a new company whose responsibility it was to increase the sagging profile of the national soccer team brand and take control of its administration ahead of the 2010 World Cup, the commercial wing is yet to start its work.
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/ 27 October 2006
South Africa’s former ambassador to Brazil, Mbulelo Rakwena, was promoted to his current position as chief director for Latin America in the department of foreign affairs in 2005 despite damning allegations of financial mismanagement and maladministration. The accusations are made in two separate documents compiled by Mkhuseli Apleni, the Deputy Director General in the corporate services department.
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/ 23 October 2006
The multibillion-rand 2010 World Cup stadium construction project, with its time frame of 18 to 34 months, was always going to cause disagreement in the very fragile relationship between politics and common sense. The bill for the stadiums has ballooned from R2-billion to R9-billion before work has even begun.
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/ 13 October 2006
Almost a year after the South African Football Foundation was launched with the help of the British government, confusion reigns over the status of this institution. Nobody associated with the project is willing to say what exactly — if anything — it has done since it was enthusiastically established last November.
Pundits say South Africa stands to lose millions in revenue if negative reports continue to cast doubt on the country’s structural capacity to host the 2010 Fifa World Cup. They warn that once negative perceptions take root in the public mind, South Africa will be in a position similar to that of Athens — where persistent doubtful reports about Greece’s readiness resulted in the 2004 Olympic Games taking place in front of half-empty stadiums.