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The SA Schools Football Association (Sasfa) has rejected the decision by the controlling soccer body, Safa, to dissolve it.
A fierce battle is looming, as Sasfa has vowed it is going nowhere while Safa says it is going ahead with its resolution and will implement it soon.
“Safa will never disband us,” said a defiant Sasfa president Mandla “Shoes” Mazibuko.
However, Safa CEO Dennis Mumble said they were pushing ahead in implementing the congress resolution.
“We never said we were disbanding Sasfa, but just taking over the running of schools football because we have a footprint through our 341 LFAs [Local Football Associations]. As one of our members, they should adhere to the congress resolution,” said Mumble.
The decision to take over the running of schools football was made at a special congress in March and endorsed last week by the Safa national executive committee, which also agreed to get the process running at provincial and regional levels.
Mazibuko, who is a former Safa vice-president, said: “We were not made by Safa and are an independent juristic body with our own constitution. Sasfa is a national body, not a subcommittee or an affiliate of Safa. We took a conscious decision to apply for a Safa membership and we don’t need Safa to exist.”
He also warned Safa to stop approaching their sponsors, saying this was illegal. “They have been negotiating in bad faith, talking to us but going behind our back to talk to our sponsors.”
He said, as a mother body, Safa should be providing guidance to Sasfa as one of its 12 associate members.
“The worrying factor is they are in a hurry to get into our sponsorship. They wrote a letter asking us to hand over all our contracts and documents.”
He alleged the decision to take over the running of schools football was taken based on disinformation.
“At the time, we were called into an impromptu meeting in Mbombela and told that it was an instruction they got in December 2014 from Minister [Fikile] Mbalula to take over the running of schools football. But we have since found out that this was not true. This took us by surprise because this never came at our joint national task team [a body that consists of the government and all other sporting federations in school sport] meeting in February.”
Sports and recreation director-general Alec Moemi did not respond to messages left for him.
Mbalula’s phone rang unanswered yesterday.
Gay Mokoena, who chairs the ad hoc committee overseeing this matter, declined to comment.
