Just how long beleaguered South African Football Association (Safa) CEO Raymond Hack will remain in office should be a cause for concern for football fans around the country. We simply cannot go on as we are.
Appointed in March 2005, the Johannesburg lawyer has steered the organisation from one disaster to the next with a level of incompetence that, at times, beggars belief. It is not all his fault; he has inept people around him, but is it not the job of the CEO of any organisation to create a work environment and develop a team that can bring about success?
Although I do not put much store into the Fifa world rankings for nations, they provide a stark picture of the decline of the national side since Hack took charge of Safa.
The month that he took office as replacement for Danny Jordaan, who moved on to the 2010 World Cup local organising committee, Bafana Bafana were ranked 40th in the world. Earlier this year, they dropped out of the top 70.
This period of time is littered with a catalogue of high-profile, embarrassing blunders that have bordered on bringing the game into disrepute in this country. What is more worrying is that the most recent have been the most damning — an indication that things are getting worse, and that Hack is losing control.
There is not much more to say about the shameless decision to appoint a little-known London-based sports agency, Star Meridian Sports, to promote and run the Mandela Challenge match against Egypt last November. The subsequent chaotic mismanagement of the event and the desperately poor crowd in attendance were a slight on the great “Mandela” name.
The event is supposed to provide funds to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, but I wonder if it received a cent — or if, indeed, the match ended up costing money. We will probably never know.
Then there was the decision to send the Orlando Pirates Under-15 side to the African Union heads-of-state summit in Ethiopia under the banner of the South African national side, a move that drew widespread condemnation, not least from Safa vice-president Nomwelo Nonkonyana.
And, of course, how can we forget the recent furore around the work permit for new Bafana coach Carlos Alberto Parreira? Hack claimed innocence and that Safa was waiting for documents from Brazil to arrive, but I have heard a very different version of events.
Safa only submitted the permit application on February 7, almost two weeks after Parreira’s arrival in the country, amid rumours the original documents were “mislaid” by Hack. As CEO, he is obviously not personally responsible for heading down to the Department of Home Affairs to submit the application, but he should ensure it happens.
This is where my biggest issue around Hack lies: his lack of accountability, even towards his staff, for such blunders. All we get are the same old excuses and hot air, but no action. I’ve said it before in this column, but if he were accountable to shareholders, as would be true in a listed company, he would have been sacked or forced to resign in disgrace long ago.
Mistakes happen in life, I accept that, but to have those around you make repeated mistakes and do nothing about it shows weak leadership, and that is something our football cannot afford in the lead-up to 2010.
Of course, just how long Hack stays in the job will depend on how long he manages to steer clear of the wrath of Safa vice-president Irvin Khoza, who is also chairperson of the local organising committee and Orlando Pirates.
Is it coincidence that some of the worst perpetrators of incompetence in Safa who somehow manage to cling on to jobs are closely aligned with Khoza? Either way, we need a CEO at Safa who will drive the business forward and take our game to the next level.
If Hack is not prepared to be that man, then the time has long gone for him to step aside.
Nick Said is editor: special projects for Kick Off magazine