The status of the commercial wing, the financial recovery plan and the position of chief executive Raymond Hack are expected to dominate the South African Football Association’s (Safa) 14th annual general meeting, which starts in Johannesburg on Friday.
Early this year Safa announced that it intends to establish a separate company to run and administer the affairs of all the national teams. This issue still divides the national body, while endless bickering over what exactly this commercial wing’s functions should be keeps stalling attempts to make it operational.
Delegates will be happier to hear about progress on the financial recovery plan — the key resolution passed at last year’s meeting.
The mandate to the finance committee, headed by Safa vice-president Mubarak Mohamed, was to find ways to try and obliterate the R98-million accumulated deficit the association was carrying — if not, ”at least to ensure that the loss did not increase” this year.
When the books are presented to the AGM on Friday they will show an improvement of R87-million, a substantial turnaround, although Safa remains R11-million in the red.
Salaries are an issue still to be addressed — an internal circular seen by the Mail & Guardian says staff are overpaid for the services they provide. Salaries are understood to range between R50 000 and R60 000 a month.
Although Mohammed would not comment directly on these figures, he confirmed that his department would be making suggestions about how to cut the wage bill. ”We have to do something — what, exactly, I am not sure.”
Mohammed said one way would be ”to wait for people to either retire or leave the association”. Already, staff numbers are down a third from last year. This has been achieved either by offering retrenchment packages or closing certain departments.
Mohammed said he will ask delegates to consider that the association has managed to fulfil its obligations with fewer staff. He told the M&G that Safa was able to reduce the deficit because the association has managed ”to downsize its costs on delivery. Instead of having four people doing something we now have two – and we still have the same results, if not better.”
Among other cost-cutting measures effected is a moratorium on the hiring of cars — pool vehicles are now used — and a decision that only the president and the three vice-presidents may fly business class.
A more thorny problem is the position of Hack. The KwaZulu-Natal region plan to introduce a motion of no confidence in the CEO, and Western Province say they will support this motion. The chief grievance of those who wish to see him removed is his failure to be in the office regularly because he is still running his law practice — despite agreeing, when he took up the post, to be a full-time Safa administrator.
His detractors cite as further proof of his inability to perform his job properly that he sends directors on wild goose chases. Early this year national executive committee (NEC) member David Nhlabathi ended up in Lesotho as head of delegation when he was supposed to be in Botswana. Also, Hack sent a letter of congratulation to Sam Masitenyane when in fact it was intended for Sam Msimango, who had been appointed a board member of the commercial wing.
Hack responded: ”People look to me because I am looking at them. I have stopped people doing what they used to do without accountability to the association. People are trying to create smokescreens, but it is very simple: if they do not want me there anymore they must just tell me and I will leave.”
He denied being to blame for the travel confusion — ”I operate in terms of what is given to me by the directors of national teams” — but acknowledged that the letter of congratulation had been ”a mistake on my part”.
”But what difference did it make to the association?” he asked. ”It did not cost us any embarrassment.”
The biggest debate at the AGM, though, will surely be over the commercial wing. Although its head, Safa vice-president Mwelo Nonkonyana, remains optimistic that the plan will work, it is clear that it will take a lot of character and conviction to have the company operational any time soon.
Senior Safa sources tell the M&G that the warring factions are now battling for the position of CEO of the commercial wing. Nonkonyana says he is aware that the rival sides are each pushing their favoured candidate, but he insists that the position will be advertised and a committee will assess applicants instead of the Safa tradition of hand-picking people for positions.
Nonkonyana says he has heard that Hack and Safa president Molefi Oliphant — who seems to be vacillating between two positions — are now ”mischievously questioning the financial viability of the company”, asking where it will get its funding.
”We will go out and get our own sponsors. In fact there are many people who are saying they are waiting for us to tell them that we have started operating,” said Nonkonyana. ”It was agreed in the NEC meeting that part of the money will come from the $10-million that [world governing body] Fifa has given to Safa. That is the reason, in fact, that the money is in a special account and not in the general account of Safa.”
The relationship between Oliphant and Nonkonyana is particularly strained at present — and both will be hoping to emerge from the AGM with their positions enhanced.
Oliphant did not respond to repeated M&G efforts to speak to him this week.