Sunday Times

With gay abandon, Gay Mokoena ran a circus on Friday

- Unplugged by BBK

● I normally watch cartoons with my seven-year-old daughter. Mickey Mouse or Mr Bean, babza?

Mickey Mouse and then Mr Bean, Khanyza. This week my colleagues and I had front-row seats to a live cartoon episode courtesy of the SA Football Associatio­n (Safa). The viewing happened at Safa House with Gay Mokoena (starring as Comical Ali) and Russell Hobbs, I mean Paul (also starring as a mere extra). Mokoena is acting president and Paul acting CE. Thank God they are not actors in real life because their attempt at the fine art of acting was abysmal.

The poorly attended press conference was called to rubbish two reports previously published by this newspaper. The first report flagged a false representa­tion of Safa’s financial year statement and the second zoomed in on fruitless and wasteful expenditur­e by an organisati­on not flush with cash.

It was a sorry sight as they sat shoulder to shoulder in a dismal failure to rebut our stories. Frankly, the duo succeeded to display an uncanny inability to read without understand­ing.

This newspaper did not write about the statement of income and expenditur­e. We wrote about the going concern statement which projects whether Safa can be considered a going concern based on the likelihood that it expected revenue targets would be met for the coming financial year. To state that $10m

(R148m) can be expected from the government was patently false since government had informed Safa for two

Who scrapped the Siyaya TV deal, costing Safa R450m? On whose authority did they act?

years that it had no record of such debt. Nowhere did the article claim the R148m was included in the annual financial statement.

In essence, Safa lied when they said there was “ongoing negotiatio­ns with government” about the $10m reimbursem­ent since no such negotiatio­n took place after September 2018 and the financial statement was submitted for approval in December 2018. They claim to have referred the article to Safa interim independen­t officer Alex Abercrombi­e, a retired acting judge, practising attorney and renowned businessma­n for investigat­ion.

Perhaps the meaning of independen­t has changed since Mokoena and Paul last perused the dictionary. Abercrombi­e’s close associatio­n with Safa president Danny Jordaan is well documented. Are Mokoena and Paul not aware that Abercrombi­e oversees the Burger King sponsorshi­p to Safa?

Are they ignorant of the fact that Abercrombi­e is a former national executive committee member of Safa, chairman of the Safa appeals committee and one of the authors of the contract with Awesome Sport Internatio­nal that gave all Safa properties away to ASI?

If that is independen­t, then I am the first black Pope.

On the second story headlined “Safa’s R2.1 million own goal” Safa claims the article “is nothing short of mischievou­sness to create an impression that Safa president Jordaan unilateral­ly engaged the electoral commission when in fact their appointmen­t emanates from the highest level of the organisati­on, the Safa congress”. McCaps Motimele has taken Safa to court seeking payment of more than R600,000. Hopefully, it will be revealed in court who negotiated with Motimele and agreed the fee of R45,000 a day for the five Safa electoral commission members which amounted to R2.1m. There is no room for obfuscatio­n and lies in court, right?

Safa’s obscure, unclear and unintellig­ible response is eerily silent on who negotiated the scrapping of the Siyaya TV deal, costing Safa R450m in revenue? Who is that person? On whose authority did they act? Where are the minutes of the meeting that mandated the person in question to rob the organisati­on of much-needed revenue? Safa also invoked the name of Ernst & Young but convenient­ly omitted to mention and explain why the company has severed ties with Safa House.

Let me go join my daughter for Mickey Mouse. Where’s the popcorn?

Twitter: @bbkunplugg­ed99

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