South African soccer is trying to clean up its image just weeks before a delegation from world governing body Fifa arrives to assess South Africa’s bid to host the 2006 World Cup
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni, Jubie Matlou and Connie Selebogo
South African soccer is set for a major shake-up as the government moves to clean up a multimillion-rand industry that remains plagued by internecine rivalry, corruption and scandal. Minister of Sport and Recreation Ngconde Balfour has been seeking to impose order in the industry amid fears that the South African Football Association (Safa), the body controlling South African soccer, has failed to administer football responsibly and efficiently. Instead of rival factions in the industry uniting for the bid, soccer has been lurching from one scandal to another.
The Premier Soccer League (PSL), which represents the cream of South African clubs, has allegedly recommended that Balfour sack the CEO of Safa, Raymond Hack. The CEO has been accused of bias towards his former club, Wits University.
The PSL has officially distanced itself from the allegations, and Safa is instituting disciplinary measures against Ephraim “Jomo” Sono, the owner of Cosmos, a middle-ranking club, who first backed the allegations about Hack.
While reeling from this saga, the industry has been wracked by the call for the replacement of Trott Moloto as the Bafana Bafana national coach following South Africa’s disappointing showing in the African Cup of Nations. Just weeks before that, Joe Ndhlela, the PSL’s CEO, was suspended for bringing the league into disrepute following fraud charges that were levelled by his previous employer, Transnet.
Balfour is understood to have isolated key factors militating against the good administration of the sport, and is particularly concerned by the conflicts of interest that have been triggered by officials holding office in both the PSL and Safa. Whereas the PSL is a commercially driven enterprise that attends to the concerns of the soccer elite, Safa is supposed to manage the welfare of all aspects of the sport.
Other concerns raised by Balfour include corruption and bribery in the adjudication of matches, shootings, kidnappings and other criminal deeds, issues regarding sponsorships, as well as nepotism and employment policies and practices of the soccer federation.
The soccer establishment has long been associated with the underworld criminal networks, and it is alleged that it is only a matter of time before the elite police unit, the Scorpions, cracks down. The investigators will be mindful of Kaizer Chiefs boss Kaizer Motaung’s celebrated comment to a judicial commission on soccer that his club was only the one that was “clean, and not run on drug money”.
The main handicap affecting Balfour is that he doesn’t have legislative powers to deal with problems in sport. According to the ministry’s representative, Graham Abrahams, it is the ministry’s policy position not to interefere in the governance and administration of sport. “The various sports associations of the different sporting codes are responsible for the administration and day-to-day running of sports. And it is the ministry’s intention to maintain this arrangement,” said Abrahams.
Balfour is nevertheless currently studying a report compiled by Safa and PSL on the concerns he raised two months ago regarding problems afflicting the two organisations.
Earlier Balfour threatened that “if Safa fails … in the governance of the sport and if it fails to put in place systems within two months, the government will step in, even if it means introducing enabling legislation to regulate the sport”.
At the heart of the power struggle between Safa and the PSL are competitions for turf, personality clashes and egos among the individuals running the soccer industry. The debacle surrounding last year’s Rothmans Cup, in which Manning Rangers had to play two different opponents in the semi-finals, is a case in point. Jomo Cosmos had fielded an ineligible player in its quarter-final victory against Qwa Qwa Stars. The losing Free State club protested – first to the PSL and then to Safa and the courts. While the courts had yet to determine a date for the case, the PSL ruled in favour of Cosmos and the game was played. Days later, however, the court ruled against Cosmos and Manning Rangers had to play the match again. Unfortunately Manning Rangers, the innocent party in the furore, lost to Qwa Qwa Stars the second time around. All of this reinforced suspicions of PSL bias against smaller clubs.
Hack said the representation of club owners on the association is not something unique to the South African situation, but that it is the personalities involved that are the problem. “Franz Backenbauer is both president of Bayern Munich, and vice- president of the German Football Association. There are similar arrangements in England and Italy. In South Africa, it is mainly a question of personality clashes that makes the arrangement suspect,” Hack said. The government has asked the soccer organisations to answer whether individuals or club owners should “straddle the lines by serving on both Safa and the PSL”.
Conflicts of interest were first highlighted during the Pickard commission hearings in 1996 when it probed issues affecting professional soccer.
The commission, which led to the resignation of former Safa president Stix Morewa, heard evidence that a structure where league officials serve in both organisations promotes conflicts of interest.
Orlando Pirates boss Irvin Khoza is a case in point; he serves on the PSL board and he is the vice-president of Safa. Khoza has sided with his erstwhile rival, Kaizer Chiefs boss Kaizer Motaung, in gunning for the PSL’s CEO, Ndhlela. According to award- winning sport reporter Thomas Kwenaite, Khoza and Motaung hold tremendous influence in the football industry.
The fragile alliance between Motaung and Khoza can be traced back to a split within the National Professional Soccer League, when the two led a mass defection of teams to establish the National Soccer League (NSL).
The 1980s breakaway led to some teams splitting into two. Orlando Pirates was one such team. The two “Orlando Pirates” teams competed to be the “real” team, a conflict that saw a team official, the late China Hlongwane, attacked by a knife-wielding hitman in front of television cameras at Ellis Park stadium for leading an alternative team on to the field.
Much of what has taken place behind the scenes in the running of professional soccer remains out of the public eye. There have been notable exceptions, such as the saga of public relations officer Abdul Bhamjee and the former general manager of the NSL, Cyril Kobus. Bhamjee was sentenced to a 14-year jail term for defrauding Safa of more than R7-million in relation to the rights for the television coverage of the 1990 World Cup. Kobus was also convicted to a four-year jail sentence for his involvement in the fraud case.
The Pickard commission found that money meant for the development of soccer didn’t make it to the soccer field. Judge Benjamin Pickard found that proceeds of the Safa Education Trust, created to help deserving people in soccer to advance their education, were paid to soccer bosses and their families.
Morewa, as Safa executive president at the time, was found guilty of raising a R700 000 “loan” from Awesome Sports International, an offshore company appointed as Safa’s marketing arm. Judge Pickard also heard that Motaung was also a beneficiary of the underhand deals. Morewa’s ally, Motaung, told Judge Pickard that his club was “clean, and that it is not run on drug money” – a jibe which sent ripples through the entire industry.
Recently, the Motimele commission, another inquiry appointed by the PSL, found that match fixing, rigging and bribery were rampant practices in the top two division of the league. The PSL, acting on the recommendations of Motimele, suspended a Safa referee who was accused of match fixing. However, Safa refused to recognise Motimele, saying that the commission was a PSL project. Balfour has nevertheless called for the implementation of the commission’s recommendations, which are likely to provide a blueprint for his clean-up plans.