”In the name of the African renaissance, trust, but not too much,” announces Irvin Khoza’s cellphone voicemail message.
The message aptly describes the Orlando Pirates and Premier Soccer League (PSL) chairperson’s involvement in the game after his return from self-imposed football exile to take the helm of Pirates in 1989.
The word ”African” in the message could well refer to his being credited with transforming the African Champions Cup from an amateur event into a money-spinning league run along the lines of European competitions.
”Renaissance” must refer mainly to Khoza’s having revived the sleeping giants of the local game, Orlando Pirates, turning them into a dominant and money-making entity. Moreover, PSL chief executive Trevor Phillip has publicly praised Khoza for being the brains — along with Kaizer Chiefs’s boss Kaizer Motaung and Jomo Sono of Cosmo — behind the formation of the premier league, where teams are awarded monthly grants and revenue from sponsors is at an all-time high.
But the man nicknamed ”the Iron Duke” has been continually dogged by scandal. Although he has never been charged in this regard, his name pops up each time the disappearance of drug dealer Rocks Dhlamini is mentioned.
In August 2001 Khoza was charged with tax fraud involving R66-million. ”When it comes to certain matters we defer to experts. But when it comes to football administration, I am an MBA,” he told the Sowetan. It is thus easy to understand why he feels one should ”trust, but not too much”.
”I am tired of being used as a scapegoat,” is one reason Khoza has given for quitting his post at Safa.
Khoza has been made a ”scapegoat” by the public — people who call into soccer talk shows or write letters to newspapers. Khoza is seen as responsible for South African football’s general malaise.
Chief among his alleged transgressions is that he holds too many positions in Safa and, therefore, wields too much power.
After publicly criticising then coach Shakes Mashaba for being inflexible about when some Europe-based players could report for the pre-Nations Cup, Safa suspended, then fired, Mashaba.
Although Khoza was absent from the meeting where Mashaba’s fate was finally sealed, many in the public claim to have seen his hand in the dismissal.
When he says ”I am tired of protecting people”, Khoza must be referring to the 22 members of the 24-person Safa executive committee that decided to fire Mashaba. Khoza had recused himself from the meeting following his public criticism of the coach. Another board member, Danny Jordan, was out of the country on bid business.
Curiously, none of the committee members (who include president Molefi Oliphant, Leepile Taunyaane, Raymond Hack, Jomo Sono, Natasha Tshicklas of Sundowns and Golden Arrows’s boss Mato Madlala) admitted they had made the decision to terminate Shakes’s contract.
Many of them were in Tunisia when the public’s ire exploded.
The attack on Khoza, as chairperson of the 2010 World Cup bid, the PSL and Orlando Pirates, came soon after he had publicly lambasted Ephraim Mashaba, the then Bafana Bafana coach, for refusing to compromise with overseas players joining the national team late in Tunisia.
But more was to come when Bafana Bafana’s performance dropped a few days before the tournament. The final blows came when Mashaba was fired and the national team was humiliated 4-0 by Nigeria. Then the knives were out for Khoza.
With his resignation, Khoza has managed to extricate himself from having to scout for a new coach for the national team, as he did when (on mandate from the executive committee) he headhunted former coaches Carlos Queiroz and Philippe Troussier.
In his defence against this attack, and explaining why he parted ways with Safa, Khoza has stressed the fact that he was elected to all positions he has held.
Khoza, along with Motaung, was first elected as Safa vice-president in 1996. It was the first time that Safa, being an amateur body, had representation from its professional affiliate. It was a bonus that such representation came in the form of the two most powerful club officials in the land.
For his return to the Safa vice-presidency, Khoza trounced Inkosi Mwelo Nonkonyane by a landslide. Nonkonyane was touted as the man who would challenge Khoza’s apparent soccer hegemony.
Last year, the same club bosses who in secret, accuse Khoza of wielding too much influence elected him unopposed as PSL chairperson.
”I am of late finding myself increasingly called to step in to defend ground already covered,” Khoza said in his resignation speech.
It would be tempting to mark 55-year-old Khoza’s sudden departure from Safa as the end of an era — one that started with his being elected secretary of the Alexandra Football Association when he was 14. But the fact is that he will remain one of the more powerful figures in the local game.
He is still chairperson of Orlando Pirates, to start with.
Khoza has on several occasions rescued the football association from bankruptcy by advancing it loans running into millions of rands. He has also been known to bail out clubs that find themselves in the red with loans that are usually repayable by those teams selling off their best players to Pirates.
As chairperson of the 2010 World Cup Bid Company Khoza remains at the helm of South African soccer’s most ambitious project yet. It means he remains in constant contact with those in political power, as he does with captains of industry.
If anyone will benefit from his quitting Safa it could be Pirates. Khoza has been accused of spending too much time attending to Safa business and neglecting his club. At Pirates, Khoza is guilty of what he has accused faceless Safa officials of —”protecting people and being used as a scapegoat” when things go wrong.
Those close to the club say nothing happens there without Khoza’s say-so. He is solely responsible for the fact that Pirates don’t have a coach or a marketing person who could turn the club’s massive following into bums on stadium seats.
It has been months since the club said it would announce the name of its new marketing manager ”next week”.
Pirates still don’t have a coach, although the Iron Duke told the media that an announcement would be made ”in a few days”. That was last October.
”A new coach will be announced once the chairman, Irvin Khoza, has decided on who is best to take over as the next Orlando Pirates coach,” the club said in a statement in October. Clearly, Khoza has been too busy, meaning that development head Augusto Palacios remains a stop-gap coach.
Khoza is a football man through and through. He has, in the past, been unable to live without getting knee-deep into football. You can bet your bottom rand that his disappearance from the national scene will not be permanent.