Johannesburg — SAFA's presidential candidate Solly Mohlabeng says the hurried scheduling of elections was done to favour of incumbent and fellow candidate Danny Jordaan.
On March 26, Mohlabeng was kicked out of the association’s 30th Ordinary Congress amid claims of improper conduct, with SAFA’s chief executive Tebogo Motlanthe saying the Congress had decided to suspend him.
The legal team of the SAFA president in Tshwane wrote to Motlanthe regarding the reports, but they didn’t get a response, resulting in Mohlabeng carrying on with his duties.
However, his relationship with some of the association’s delegates has been sour since his “supposedly suspension”.
But Mohlabeng, who was cleared by the Governance Committee last Monday to run for the presidency elections alongside Jordaan and Ria Ledwaba on June 25, says there was a motive behind his non-existing suspension.
“Immediately when they said I was suspended, they wanted the elections to be done very quickly so that I don’t have time to deal with the cloud that was put over me,” Mohlabeng told IOL Sport.
“It was done (by SAFA), with the intention that ‘that these ones mustn’t have time to campaign and by the time they wake up, the elections would be done’. That’s my belief.”
Mohlabeng is not the only candidate that feels the scheduling of the elections for June 25 was done to swing the pendulum to the direction of Jordaan, who’s standing for a third term.
Safa’s vice-president Ledwaba served court papers seeking for the elections to be postponed. But they’ve been, allegedly, thrown out, with the elections said to be going ahead as planned.
Part and parcel of Mohlabeng’s manifesto is having proper structures within the association, especially at the top.
At the moment, Mohlabeng feels that the statutes in the SAFA constitution are not adhered to, considering the appointments of the Governance, Ethics and Disciplinary Committees.
“According to the SAFA statutes, the Governance Committee is an independent committee that must be approved by the Congress and that was not the case,” he said.
“The Ethics Committee was not approved by the Congress as well. And unfortunately, (judge) Sisi Justice Khampepe agreed to this but I don’t know whether she knows what happened is a violation of the Constitution of SAFA.
“They were announced in November 2020 to the media that they are an Ethics Committee, but we only had a Congress on the 26th of March, and they were not approved or submitted.
“The DC Committee and the Arbitration panel, the last time they were approved by the Congress was in 2014. And according to SAFA’s disciplinary code, they could only be at the office for four years.”
With the National Executive Committee (NEC) Members and regional members set to cast their votes at the elections, it appears that Jordaan will be in office for another term.
Already there are regions, such as Limpopo, who’ve publicly endorsed him.
But should Mohlabeng fail in his tracks to overthrow Jordaan, he’ll continue to serve as the SAFA president in Tshwane for another term after being elected unopposed at the City’s election on May 28.
Meanwhile, failure to win the presidency race could all but spell the end of Ledwaba’s nine-year stint with SAFA as her region Capricorn didn’t nominate her for the NEC roles.
@Mihlalibaleka
IOL Sport