As the world celebrates the rise of women’s football, South Africa finds itself mourning a betrayal – one not from opponents on the field, but from those entrusted with the beautiful game’s stewardship.
Safa has reached a critical tipping point, its rot laid bare by years of administrative neglect, financial quicksand and a deeply entrenched culture of impunity.
Its failure to renew Banyana Banyana’s flagship sponsorship with Sasol is merely the latest in a long and shameful litany of collapses.
On June 30, the long-standing sponsorship of the women’s national team expired without a renewal in place.
For 16 years, Sasol stood as a proud partner to Banyana Banyana, helping elevate the team to African champions and the FIFA World Cup.
Yet, when the moment came to preserve and build upon that legacy, Safa had nothing ready. No proposal. No urgency. No shame.
In a touch of incredulity, Safa president Danny Jordaan attempted to shift the blame to corporate South Africa, citing a “boys’ club” reluctance to invest in women’s sport, in a presentation to Parliament just a few weeks ago.
But this was gaslighting at its finest.
Safa had long known that Sasol’s reputation was being damaged through late payments to the team, inability to settle on bonuses before the 2023 FIFA World Cup, and teams taking the association to court for non-payment of prize monies, and still failed to act on the renewal of the sponsorship.
Beneath the surface, Safa’s financial foundation has completely disintegrated. Consider the facts:
• No approved budgets for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years – an inexcusable lapse.
• Current assets are worth just 28c for every R1 owed – a 2024 current ratio of 0.28, which signals an organisation functionally bankrupt.
• No, or partial, grants were paid to Safa regions for two years, depriving grassroots football of essential resources.
• No payment of referees, travel subsidies, or prize monies to clubs in the Sasol Women’s League – crippling the development of the game.
• And yet, over R6 million was paid in NEC honoraria in 2022 alone in one year, including full payments for 2020, when football activity had ground to a halt due to Covid-19.
• And then, in a stunning display of hubris, Safa expanded the number of members on its executive committee to 48 this past weekend – by far the largest of 211 football associations around the world and much larger than the executive committees of all six of FIFA’s confederations.
All of this while the organisation scrambles to secure funding for basic operations and appeals to the government for bailouts.
Safa’s June 3, 2025, appearance before Parliament’s portfolio committee on sport, arts and culture exposed more than just poor administration – it laid bare a culture of chronic
deception:
• Misleading claims about sponsorship revenue hidden behind “confidentiality clauses”.
• Persistent late payment of
players.
• A lack of transparency around coach remuneration.
Jordaan also insisted that South Africa had made a bid for the 2027 Women’s World Cup – an outright lie. No such bid was approved by the government in accordance with the Bidding and Hosting of International Sport and Recreational Events Regulations, 2010. Yet staff were hired for the bid, paid salaries, and sent abroad to campaign, even as the association teetered on the brink of financial ruin.
The spectacle of a governing body defending the indefensible did not stop there.
• Jordaan and the CFO, charged with fraud, remain in office.
unsuspended;
• The Bafana Bafana team manager, responsible for tracking yellow cards – a failure that may cost SA World Cup qualification – continues in his role unsanctioned.
• Whistleblowers and former senior staff have been pushed out, silenced, or subjected to legal threats.
Safa’s hypocrisy in its treatment of women’s football is especially galling. In 2022, it removed the women’s committee from its constitution.
It simultaneously raised NEC eligibility criteria, disqualifying the vast majority of the 806 women admitted into local and regional executive committees since 2017.
The successful girls’ grassroots initiative was abandoned. Promised provincial academies remain unfunded dreams.
The Girls’ High Performance Centre at the University of Pretoria is reportedly empty, with no payments made to house players.
And now, the flagship sponsor is gone. This is not neglect – it is erasure.
Internal governance now more closely resembles an autocracy than a democracy.
• Only two ordinary congresses have been held in five years.
• The powers of Congress have been deliberately stripped from the Safa statutes, consolidating power within the NEC.
• Regional elections are being manipulated through unconstitutional interventions and unlawful truncating of terms of office by the head office in violation of FIFA rules.
• Dissenters and critics are subjected to “lawfare” – legal intimidation tactics designed to stifle transparency. This is not a football organisation. It is an illiberal democracy, propped up by patronage and silence.
What Safa has become is an embarrassment to SA football.
The question is not whether change is needed. The question is: Will South Africa act before the whole house collapses?
• Mumbleis is a former CEO of Safa
