The women’s African Cup of Nations was held in South Africa late last year but the national team has not been in action since and the momentum created by the tournament is ebbing away
Marianne Merten
Could you imagine Bafana Bafana striker Benni McCarthy working as a gaardjie, or guard, on a taxi route through a heavily gang-infested area on the Cape Flats?
That is how Banyana Banyana star striker Jo-Anne Solomon earned a living for the past three years. She stopped a few months ago because “it got too dangerous” and refuses to talk about it.
Solomon now looks after three children in Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats for R400 a month. She lives around the corner from Ajax Road.
“It’s funny for me how we women do not get the recognition. My heart is very sore … I’m wasting my legs for this country,” the 26-year-old shrugs.
The petite, shy striker, whose goal against Ghana took her team to the finals of the African Women’s Championship in November, is South Africa’s top goal scorer male or female with 21 balls in the net in 12 international games.
She started playing with her three brothers at home. Growing up in one of the roughest parts in the university and wine town of Stellenbosch, Solomon left school after Grade 11. Her talent was noticed and in 1995 she moved permanently to Cape Town to play for Spurs FC.
Although reluctant to be interviewed, Solomon says her best experience was the attention women’s soccer received in November, even if the trophy remained with Nigeria when the final was abandoned due to crowd violence.
But since that tournament none of the national women footballers has been called up for a training camp. And Banyana Banyana captain Desiree Ellis does not know when or even if there are any training camps planned. There are no friendlies on the roster in preparation for next years’ qualifiers for the African Women’s Championships and the 2003 World Cup.
It is understood the scheduled rounds of games during which national selectors pick Banyana Banyana hopefuls were cancelled last month. No new dates have been set.
“People meet me in the street and ask: ‘When are you playing again?’ And when you have to say: ‘I don’t know’, they just look at you as if you’re stupid,” Ellis says. “We made people aware of women’s football. It’s now going down the drain. The problem is always finances there is no money, we are told.”
There are about 50 000 women footballers in scores of clubs countrywide, particularly in the Western and Eastern Cape and parts of Gauteng.
The game has been played for decades and in 1993 the national team was formed under the umbrella of the South African Football Association (Safa).
Behind-the-scenes battles for cash and support within Safa are said to be vicious. There is no women’s soccer representative at executive level. Safa’s women’s football committee is accused of failing to promote women footballers and ensure they get a slice of the development cake.
There is no reference to Banyana Banyana or women’s soccer on the official Safa website, except to list the two sponsors of the under-19 and senior women’s games.
But Safa chief executive Danny Jordaan says they are not ignoring the strong support and commercial potential of women’s soccer. Instead the game has to be built from scratch throughout the country, including the development of women coaches of which there are only two administrators and referees.
“Let’s celebrate the fact that in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape and sections of Gauteng there are regular competitions. Women’s football was never played on a consistent basis throughout the regions.”
Safa plans a first national women’s league for next year. All 25 regions have been instructed to establish women’s leagues already in place in at least the Western Cape and Gauteng. Nine teams, plus one representing the host proceed to the national competition after a series of play-offs.
Successful teams go on to play curtain raisers at Premier Soccer League (PSL) games.
Plans for a national club-based tournament in Cape Town during September are being finalised.
Ellis remembers playing her first game for the national women’s team in a pair of broken Pumas and how the team sewed their own kits.
But she also recalls avoiding a mugging near her Flats home in Hanover Park last month when the would-be-robber told her: “I wouldn’t rob you, you’re Desiree Ellis”.
For three years the 38-year old was unemployed, but today she holds down a nine-to-five job and does the occasional soccer commentary on games like the recent Bafana Bafana clash with Congo.
Recently she has joined a Cape Flats-based sports outreach initiative, Future Factory, which works with various local government sports coordinators in disadvantaged areas.
Her commitment to women’s soccer is unshaken despite setbacks. “We are actually doing it for the love of the sport,” Ellis smiles.
ENDS