Sport

Congratulations Bafana, as we await Safa's action against the yellow card saga

OPINION

Malibongwe Mdletshe|Published

Vincent Tseka, the Bafana team manager.

Image: Fcebook

The adage goes “All actions have consequences”. So, Yes! Hooray! As well-deserved congratulations continue for the Bafana Bafana players, coach Hugo Broos and all his technical members after they booked their ticket to the 2026 Fifa World Cup in North America.

But, the South African Football Association (Safa) still need to account and take statement-making action against the said Bafana team manager Vincent Tseka and anyone responsible for the yellow card saga that caused us all heart palpitations in the closing stages of the 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifiers.

Bafana had their World Cup dream in their hands for the longest period during the qualifiers, up until the Federation of International Football Association (Fifa) docked them three points at the end of September.

The reason behind that as is known by every football-following South African- Bafana played an ineligible Teboho Mokoena in March against Lesotho in the World Cup qualifier. The sanction for that came to be Fifa awarding a 3-0 win to Lesotho.

All of a sudden the World Cup dream was no longer in Bafana’s hands, and we were going to rely on other results going our way. Without that sanction, Bafana would’ve qualified for next year’s World Cup on October 10 when they drew 0-0 with neighbours Zimbabwe at Moses Mabhida Stadium.

But no, that draw felt like a loss and the World Cup dream deferred. Heck! Going to the last match against Rwanda on Tuesday, some of us were having sleepless nights imagining the worst while hoping for the best. First, we had to beat Rwanda - the very same Rwanda that beat us 2-0 in Kigali in 2024, secondly, we had to rely on arch-nemesis Nigeria holding or beating then group leaders Benin.

We may be used to these calculations as much as Bafana and the qualifiers are concerned but hey, this time around we’d already told ourselves we would not be needing these calculators.

Why would we? We are talking about Bafana that for the first time in over 20 years finished on the podium in the recent Afcon. We are talking about a Bafana that qualified for back-to-back Afcons (2023 and 2025/2026) for the first time in 24 years. That they did unbeaten, and the very same Bafana had lost just one game in the recent World Cup qualifiers.

All was well, up until Danny Jordaan’s Safa and Tseka happened.

This disgraced the whole nation, and to recall that Tseka has a previous act of negligence where he messed up team flight and/or accommodation bookings and threatened to spill the beans cooking at Safa House should he’d been fired, makes it all even more sickening.

We just cannot and must not go forward with such skeletons unexorcised. We are now back to global standards. We must act as such.