Almost a year after the South African Football Foundation (SAFF) was launched with the help of the British government, confusion reigns over the status of this institution.
Nobody associated with the project is willing to say what exactly — if anything — it has done since it was enthusiastically established last November, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair instrumental in its formation and £10-million in funding.
Former South African president Nelson Mandela was upbeat and commented at the time about its significance, saying the timing of the opportunity was impeccable when viewed in the context of all the envisaged benefits of the 2010 World Cup.
The foundation is based on a similar project in Britain, whose main task is to mobilise support for grassroots football development. More importantly, the SAFF is supposed to be a vehicle for identifying talent and placing South Africa youngsters with clubs in England.
The aim is to extend links to other countries around the world as the process matures.
The SAFF is a project of the South African Football Association (Safa) Development Trust, whose chairperson is businessman Tokyo Sexwale.
This week Sexwale was vague on what had been achieved so far by the foundation and would only go on record to say: ”All things are on track and there will be an important announcement in due course in respect of project development.”
The British government provided the initial £10-million last year. The SAFF was expected to seek subsequent funding for the project from the private sector.
Director of the trust Moss Sibilanga first blamed the foundation’s inaction on a lack of money: ”The first year has been devoted to planning and raising funds because we don’t have all the money we need.”
When asked why R150-million was inadequate get the process off the ground, Sibilanga said there had been no progress regarding the identification of youngsters because Safa’s ”technical committee was supposed to have come up with a criteria for the selection of young players” and had not done so.
He then said Safa had to come up with a plan about who would look after the young players (all under-14s, he insists) when they were eventually selected.
He would not say who at Safa is working on the plan or when the process is likely to be finalised. He did, however, say: ”It has been difficult to get people together and talk about this.”
Safa technical committee member Ted Dumitru said: ”The proposition [about identifying young talent] was made a long time ago but was never tabled and discussed properly. Since then nothing has happened.”
Safa CEO Raymond Hack said his office had nothing to do with trust.
The lack of progress of SAFF is indicative of the general attitude of both the government and Safa towards the development of football at amateur level in the country.
Except for claiming a search for extra funds, Sibilanga could not say exactly what his office has been doing to get the foundation off the ground. But how will the SAFF bosses know how much more they need, when they don’t yet have a structure for their programmes?