It appears that Bafana Bafana are not out of the woods and could still face punishment after Teboho Mokoena played in a World Cup qualifier against Lesotho when he should have been serving a one-match suspension.
SAFA officials, including president Danny Jordaan, appeared in front of the portfolio committee on sport, arts and culture on Tuesday, and were often left speechless and at times looked sheepish as they were questioned on accountability.
The meeting also laid bare the organisation’s terrible financial state.
Present with Jordaan were SAFA CEO Lydia Monyepao, CFO Gronie Hluyo, as well as executive member Poobie Govindasamy. Conspicuous by his absence was sports minister Gayton McKenzie.
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One of the issues confronted was that of Mokoena’s participation against Lesotho. Mokoena was supposed to be serving a one-match suspension for that match after being shown two yellow cards in previous qualifying games.
That blunder now threatens to derail the team’s qualification campaign. It had been thought that Hugo Broos and his men had escaped punishment after Lesotho missed the deadline to complain, but a comment by Govindasamy suggested Bafana Bafana were not yet out of the woods.
Demanding accountability from officials, Action SA’s Athol Trollip asked what had been done against the individual responsible for missing the yellow cards.
It took a while to get an answer from the SAFA officials, who were looking around the room and did not know what to say, Govindasamy eventually spoke up and stated that the issue was still being investigated.
“That matter is still under investigation. It will be dealt with… When FIFA makes that decision, then only can we complete the investigation,” Govindasamy said, suggesting that world football’s governing had not yet decided how they were going to deal with it.
Explaining how the blunder could have happened, Govindasamy added: “FIFA, CAF and the match commissioner were not informed of the yellow cards. When you get to a match commissioner’s meeting, that’s when you’re alerted to this. Even SAFA was not alerted. It came up after the game against Lesotho.”
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