MASHABA ON SHAKY GROUND

BELEAGUERED Bafana Bafana coach Ephraim ‘‘Shakes” Mashaba’s fate has been left in the hands of a task team that will go through his reign with a fine-tooth comb and then decide whether he should be allowed to continue in the high pressure job or face the sack.

Bafana’s qualification for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations hangs by the thinnest of threads and the South African Football Association (Safa) has asked former national team coaches Clive Barker, Jomo Sono, erstwhile captains Lucas Radebe and Neil Tovey, among others, to run the rule over Mashaba’s regime over the past 10 months.

Safa CEO Dennis Mumble told the Sunday Times that the evaluation was under way and the ‘‘match-bymatch” assessment will cover both the 2017 Cup of Nations and the 2018 World Cup qualifiers.

‘‘That judgment process is already under way and we shouldn’t hide the fact that [it] is under way,” Mumble said. ‘‘But we have to do it in a dignified way and in a way that does not bring the sport down.

“Again, we do not want to react in a knee-jerk fashion.”

It is unclear at the moment if the task team will also speak to the players during the assessment as it has emerged that some of them are becoming increasingly unhappy with Mashaba.

The 0-0 home draw against Cameroon in Durban on Tuesday night left third-placed Bafana precariously close to the abyss and with just three points from four matches in Group M. They could be officially put out of their misery when the continental qualifiers resume in June.

Mumble said it was important to note that qualifying for the Cup of Nations in Gabon was one part of Mashaba’s mandate as he also had to get the national team to the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

While Mashaba’s charges have been no great shakes in the continental showpiece qualifiers, they have been up to the challenge in the matches they have played in the World Cup qualifiers.

They beat Angola 4-1 home and away on aggregate in the preliminary rounds to reach the third round and join 19 other African nations.

The draw for the third round will be held on June 24 at the Confederation of African Football’s headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, and the winners of the five four-team groups will go on to represent Africa at the 2018 World Cup.

‘‘Yes, we do have the option of saying ‘listen, we do not think that this is going to work’ [to Mashaba]. But that is not something you arrive at by virtue of a single match performance or where we are at this point in time.

“So, yes, there is still confidence in the coach at this moment but that confidence will be informed further by the assessments that we are doing and are going to do in the next couple of months.”

Former Bafana coach Gordon Igesund was similarly given two mandates to reach the semifinals of the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations and to qualify for the 2014 World Cup.

He failed to reach both mandates but still received a contract extension after Safa officials decided he’d done enough to earn it.

Mumble stressed that their intention was not to continue the previous cycle of changing coaches and it was for this reason that they had elected to use a more measured approach in dealing with the national team’s current challenges in the aftermath of the recent continental showpiece qualifying matches against Cameroon.

The Safa CEO also revealed that they had observed Mashaba’s hostile treatment of the media with alarm over the past few weeks and they would take urgent steps to address the increasingly aggressive national team coach’s behaviour towards journalists.

A meeting was held at Safa House this week in the aftermath of his latest run-in with journalists and Mashaba was told that his actions were only serving to bring his employers into disrepute.

‘‘We have to respect and understand the role of the media,” Mumble said.