From a hospital bed to the grave, these are the finances of Safa
● The mandarins of the SA Football Association (Safa) will today congregate at the Sandton Convention Centre. The occasion of their congregation is their annual general meeting (AGM).
One of the deliberations, as is wont with these sardine-sandwich munching and beverage-gobbling gatherings, will be the health — or lack thereof — of their finances.
Considering that the football governing body in the country incurred losses of about R20m in their financial year which ended on June 30 last year, mentioning Safa and healthy coffers amounts to a contradiction in motion.
Here’s why. At this AGM, the minions will rubber-stamp a R74m deficit that acting CEO Gay “Abandon” Mokoena announced on Thursday when he addressed the media.
That’s almost quadruple the deficit they deposited last year. That, ladies and gentlemen, can only mean one thing and one thing only: the finances of the body in charge of football in the republic have moved from the hospital bed straight to the grave.
At the presser, Mokoena presented two postures. He was Father Christmas bearing gifts of good news on the one hand and as a bearer of terrible tidings on the other.
The positives, as reported by Marc “Mpiyakhe” Strydom on TimesLive, “comes in terms of Safa’s core function of developing football in the performance of women’s and men’s junior and senior teams winning Cosafa Cups and reaching continental and global tournaments”.
It is great to see our national teams qualifying for major international tournaments.
But truth be told, when Bafana reached the quarterfinals of the Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt a few months ago, it was their first time since 2013.
Before that, they frequently fraternised in the group stages.
And that’s if the bloody buggers bothered to nullify their allergy for qualifying without their entry being by virtue of being hosts.
So, beating the drum for reaching the last eight in Egypt is not only being melodramatic, but ventures strongly towards the territory of lunacy.
Seriously speaking, giving a fish a gold medal for swimming is a waste of that precious metal.
The deed by David Notoane to get the under-23s to qualify for the Japan 2020 Olympics deserves a nod, especially when you factor in the chaos that characterised
Who among them decided to write off the Siyaya obligation to Safa which was R450m for three years
the preparation for the U-23 Afcon where the team secured their place for the journey to the East as one of the top three finishers.
But Safa can only really celebrate any measure of success in the event the Gang of 2019 go one better than the Classes of 2000 and 2016, who never emerged from the group stages.
Banyana really raised the flag for women’s football, Desiree Ellis and the team falling to nemesis Nigeria at the final hurdle of the Africa Women Cup of Nations. Ellis was in wonderland as she was awarded Confederation of African Football Women's
Coach of the Year in 2018.
Thembi Kgatlana won Women’s Player of the Year. The Caf Women’s Team of the Year qualified for their maiden Women’s World Cup, though they went on to lose all their three matches to China, Spain and Germany.
Mokoena’s bad news of the deep, dark R74m financial hole arises from Safa’s financial year from December 2018 to December 2019.
It is curious why Safa would report a December to December financial year when last year they operated on a June to June time frame. The bottom line is that Safa will continue trading recklessly, running deeper into an abyss that will cause its assets to whittle away in the short term because its assets will have to be disposed of to settle its liabilities.
What, with mounting liabilities (outstanding grants to regions, nonpayment of prize monies, non-payment of referees fees, no new investments in development, etc), there’s no way out of it.
Governance in Safa is now so poor, the mandarins gathered at the Sandton Convention Centre just approved this budget without questioning it because big boss signed off on it.
None of them have bothered to ask who among them decided to write off the Siyaya obligation to Safa which was R450m for three years at R150m a year.
Because they are paupers living from hand to mouth, they are bankrupting the 2010 Legacy Trust because nobody wants to sponsor them.
Twitter: @bbkunplugged99