The cash-strapped South Africa Football Association’s (Safa) financial crisis has been partly eased by the SABC’s payment of R10-million of the money the broadcaster owes the association.
The association has resorted to debt collectors to manage a cash crunch that appears even worse than was reported in the Mail & Guardian last week.
Confirming that the SABC has forked out R10-million of the R27-million it owes, Safa chief executive officer Leslie Sedibe said: “We have professional debt collectors who are doing a good job so far. We have also brought on board experts to manage our cash flow and I am happy to say that everything is now under control.”
Safa was understood to be overdrawn by R7-million and owed a further R7-million by Âvarious debtors. But a senior Safa official has told the M&G the situation is even bleaker than those figures suggest.
“We are close to R10-million in the red, excluding what we need to pay our suppliers,” he said, adding that there was no money to pay staff.
But Sedibe said on Thursday that Safa had collected enough money since last week to ease the cash crisis and “everybody will be getting their salaries this month”.
“All the Safa regions will also receive their grants either on [Thursday or Friday],” he added.7