Safa CEO intends to empower and appoint more women in top posts
Reshuffling targets mostly qualified black women
Reshuffling is unfolding at the headquarters of local football - Safa House - as the national association searches for a suitable candidate to fill the position of head of communications.
This comes after incumbent Dominic Chimhavi was redeployed to stakeholder relations.
TV and radio personality Romy Titus has been standing in for Chimhavi and she has been tipped for the position on a full-time basis.
This past week, former Banyana Banyana skipper Amanda Dlamini was unveiled as the association’s head of commercial and marketing.
In May, another female administrator, Lydia Monyepao, rose to the top echelons of Safa as the chief operating officer. Monyepao is a former Banyana star player.
“What I said when I took over is that women need to be given space at Safa. We must move away from the situation where women were never given serious positions.
“It was only Fran Hiltonsmith who was in a top position, they all used to be clerks,” said Safa CEO Tebogo Motlanthe.
“Part of my agenda was to
transform and to empower, in particular black women. We will give a chance to those who qualify and who will contribute to our football and in administration, and that’s why you saw Lydia and the new lady, advocate Rachel Mkhonto, who works in my office dealing with legal issues. We will continue to give capable women management positions if they are qualified.
“With Romy, I want to strengthen our relationship with the media. I do not have a media head because Dominic is in another department now. I will be getting a media head.
“We are going to rotate media personnel as media officers of our national teams. That’s the programme that I have started. As soon as we get a head of media, we will decide on the position of media officer.
“Like in Bafana, we want to get a great mechanism that is why we have a team manager [Vincent Tseka] and a communications person,” Motlanthe said.
“We need a communications head, we just came from section 189 and the principle is that what we don’t have internally we must get externally, so the position will be advertised and we will start interviewing people,” he explained further.
Motlanthe cleared the air with regards to the longserving SA Under-23 team manager Sinethemba Mbatha, who did not travel to the Olympic Games with the team.
“Sinethemba was not ousted from the team, she was never employed on a permanent basis, she was on a parttime basis.”
We will continue to give capable women management positions