One of the South African Football Association’s (Safa) regions in Limpopo this week opened a can of worms, claiming that the country’s football body owes them over R1.6-million in R35 000 monthly grants over the past four years.
This revelation came a day after Safa officials, led by their president Danny Jordaan appeared before parliamentary sports portfolio committee, where they were grilled about the association’ state of finance.
The chairman in one of the regions,who spoke on anonymity as he fears to be victimised, told Sunday World that he can’t face most of the clubs in his region anymore because they have so many questions to which he doesn’t have answers.
“At some point I was forced to pay four clubs R20 000 from my own pocket to avoid risking my life,” he said.
Several clubs in the regional Hollywoodbets League share two common complaints: playing jerseys and non-payment.
Said one of the clubs’ chairmen: “My club is currently on position one and we are remaining with only one match to wrap our 2025/26 season, yet I don’t know how much the prize money is and whether we will receive it.”
Another club, through the coach, said they were on several occasions forced to take off their jerseys which were not branded by the title sponsor’s name.
“Sometimes the players will fake injuries just to go and play in the community tournaments where they receive some incentives. Things are very bad in the league, so much that each club is forking out R600 to pay referees per home game for which there are no assistant referees because that demands more money.”
Former Safa-Limpopo coordinator, Nare “Fuduwa” Mathekga said the issue of jerseys started long time ago. “I always made sure that I went to Safa headquarters to collect jerseys and the money for the referees as per club’s entitlement, but that in the end landed me in trouble and ultimately I was fired.”
As for the non-payment of monthly grants, Mathekga said: “What I know is that each and every sponsor coming aboard as a league sponsorship is mandated to sign a service level agreement between the association and that particular sponsor of which part of the money goes to the club’s monthly grants.”
