Safa elections ‘may have to be postponed’

Govindasamy says match-fixing probe must run its course first

THE South African Football Association (Safa) is willing to postpone its September elections if the independent judicial commission of inquiry that is to investigate alleged corruption in the Bafana Bafana warm-up matches before the 2010 Soccer World Cup takes longer than expected.

Safa officials are expected to elect a new leadership in September, but the organisation’s legal committee chairman, Poobie Govindasamy, told Business Day yesterday that they were willing to postpone the much talked about elections.

This would be to ensure that the judicial commission of inquiry had the time it needed to finalise the long-running match-fixing saga.

“We want the commission to have all the time it needs to wrap up its business, and if that does not happen before September, then we have no problem pushing our elections to another date,” Govindasamy said.

“We cannot have any question marks, and we want this whole thing to be investigated thoroughly, and if it means postponing the elections, then so be it.”

Safa president Kirsten Nematandani, Fifa secretary-general Jerome Valcke and Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula met in Zurich, at the football governing body’s headquarters at the weekend and a decision was taken to investigate the alleged corruption in the Bafana matches before the global showpiece in SA.

The decision to set up a judicial commission is the latest in a longrunning saga that began when a Fifa report last year found that an Asian betting syndicate may have fixed Bafana’s pre-World Cup friendlies against Thailand, Bulgaria, Colombia and Guatemala.

Several senior Safa officials — including Nematandani — were suspended in December after the report become public, but the decision was reversed at the beginning of the year after it emerged that the committee that imposed the suspensions had no power to do so.

Govindasamy said some senior officials who would be running for positions in the Safa elections could be called to face the commission, and that was one of the reasons that the election could be postponed.

Their names could be in the media following their appearances before the commission, and Safa would not like to have anybody who is subsequently elected to office to have a cloud of uncertainty hanging over his head.

The Safa legal committee chairman said he was astounded when he read suggestions in the media over the past few days that some officials at Safa House were trying to sweep allegations made by anonymous people in a leaked dossier under the carpet.

“Why would anyone want anything to be swept under the carpet when all this has done so much damage to people’s reputations and South African football in general?” Govindasamy asked. “I work in the legal profession and I want to get to the bottom of all this.

“How on earth could I want anything to be swept under the carpet? I want this to be resolved fast because it has gone on for far too long now.”

Govindasamy said he agreed with Nematandani’s view that some people were working furiously to ensure that the current Safa leadership is ousted from office long before the elections.

According to Govindasamy, these anonymous individuals authored the dossier — which was rejected by Fifa and will not form part of the judicial commission of inquiry. These faceless individuals had used the media to launch a relentless campaign of negative stories since the beginning of the year.

“Obviously our detractors do not want us to achieve what we set out to do when we came into office, and they want to prevent us from reaching our goals,” Govindasamy said.

“They are distorting the truth and trying to use this so-called dossier.”

Safa said yesterday that its national executive committee “merely ratified the accord reached in Zurich” without making any amendments to the original agreement reached by Mbalula, Valcke and Nematandani.

The ball was now in the government’s court with regard to the establishment of a judicial commission of enquiry.