The biggest game in South African soccer at the moment is a slanging match. Stefaans Br?mmer and Stuart Hess look at some of the main players
SOMETHING is rotten in the state of soccer. Claims of drug dealing, poison plots, bribery and corruption make for a rough-and- tumble in which the ultimate loser is the game.
For the last four months the Pickard Commission, appointed by Sports Minister Steve Tshwete to investigate allegations of corruption in the National Soccer League (NSL) and the South African Football Association (Safa), has been the scene of a slanging match between the supremos of the sport.
But outside the commission’s chambers in Sandton runs a parallel fixture in which the long knives are flashing in the glare of the media spotlight.
This week the Premier Soccer League, an affiliate of the NSL, reacted angrily to claims by Kaizer Motaung, MD of Kaizer Chiefs, that he had boycotted the league’s launch a month ago because he had been tipped off he would be poisoned at the function. The league denied the poison allegation, but asked Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi to investigate.
Bizarre as the tip-off had been, Motaung chose to heed it, saying: “There is so much acrimony in football that you cannot trust anybody.”
The latest feuding appears to stem from animosity between Safa, the controlling body of football in South Africa, and NSL, the Safa affiliate which represents the professional clubs. Behind the scenes, the battle lines are drawn further between powerful interest groups like the “A-team”, allegedly a caucus of soccer supremos, top businessmen and politicians who “manipulate” Safa.
Since the mid-1980s, soccer in South Africa has gone through a series of structural changes aimed at breaking down racial barriers and streamlining administration. The United Democratic Front and later the African National Congress played a significant role in bringing the factions together, culminating in the 1991 creation of Safa.
But the new structures brought with them a vying for control – and competition over the lucrative spoils of the game – which now threatens to undo whatever was left of the facade of unity.
Said a member of the sports fraternity who played a leading role in the unity negotiations: “It was big bucks from day one, and that culture stayed … It has done nothing to improve the lot of black soccer.”
The groupings include:
Safa is led by Solomon “Stix” Morewa, its executive president. Morewa met ANC leaders in exile in 1986 or 1987, where he was identified as the organisation’s choice to be future supremo of the sport in South Africa. The idea, a knowledgeable party said, was to “get soccer behind the ANC”, while encouraging the sport to integrate so that the sports boycott could be lifted on multi-racial soccer. The ANC also made approaches to Motaung at the time, but he “backed off”.
While Morewa is nominally in charge of Safa, his image has been seriously dented by evidence before the Pickard Commission that the Safa Education Trust, created to help deserving people involved in soccer advance their education, had paid money to soccer bosses and their children. Evidence was that “an S Morewa, or possibly S Molewa”, had also received R3 000.
There have also been allegations before the commission that the “A-team”, or members of it, have been acting as the real power behind the throne.
NSL: Two of its leading lights are Irvin Khoza, the Orlando Pirates chief, and Jomo Sono, boss of Jomo Cosmos football club. NSL members appear to believe that Safa is trying to wrest more powers from it, and also feel that not all benefits due to the clubs – such as a stake in some large sponsorships – are handed down by Safa. Sono encapsulated the feeling in a newspaper column: “There is concern among the professionals that the Safa leadership might not always be able to represent their interests as well as the professionals want them to.
“There was the case of our rights being sold to a private company [apparent reference to Awesome Sports International, an offshore company] for a mere R700 000. We gave them the professional players in order to raise monies and they in turn gave it to the company.”
When Motaung, a close ally of Morewa’s, told the commission his club, Kaizer Chiefs, was “clean” and that “we do not run our team with drug money”, it drew counter-fire from Sono and his NSL ally Khoza. Sono told the Mail & Guardian that Motaung should give facts and refrain from “making allegations he could not verify”.
But, indeed, drugs allegations in the upper echelons of soccer have been one of the sport’s greatest blemishes in the public perception. Khoza has been at the centre of a row over the disappearance and presumed murder of Soweto socialite Rocks Dhlamini in April last year after a deal with alleged drug baron Vicky Goswami – who has since left the country – went wrong. Khoza has acknowledged being an intermediary in a money transaction related to the deal, but denied knowledge of it being related to drugs.
In the meantime, Chris Meela, who gave police information on Dhlamini’s disappearance, died mysteriously in August after disappearing from hospital, while Sylvester Mofokeng, a convict linked to Dhlamini’s disappearance in press reports, was critically wounded by police when he “escaped” from prison.
Awesome Sports International (ASI): An offshore company appointed as its marketing arm by Safa. Allegations have been that Safa policies have been dictated by the close relationship between Safa officials and ASI. Said Judge Pickard during one of the commission sittings: “There are … private interests which dictate Safa’s policies and the reason for this is the suggestion that ASI and Safa executives are partners who serve together but on what basis they serve, I don’t really know at this stage.”
But Pickard had his wings clipped last month when ASI went to court to contest warrants issued by the commission to obtain ASI documentation. After legal advice that the warrants were “probably unconstitutional”, the commission withdrew them, meaning it may not be able to find out whether Safa officials benefited personally from ASI contracts.
The “A-team”, whose power some say is on the wane, has been accused at the commission of acting like a Mafia-grouping manipulating soccer from behind the scenes. Motaung, Morewa and other leading soccer luminaries – as well as prominent businessmen and politicians – are alleged to be among its membership.
NSL executive member Veli Mahlangu said the body was a formal structure whose members had to pay a fee to remain part of the select elite. He said it included politicians – whom he refused to name – and that the body “wanted to control soccer and members wanted to recruit politicians whom they believed would give the group a powerful influence”. He said Khoza was part of the group, but left after becoming disillusioned.
There have been allegations that ASI director Brian Mahon was also a member, but Motaung denied before the commission that this was the case. Mahon has so far declined to testify.
The commission sits next on October 8.