Mohlabeng pledges to make refs professional should he oust Jordaan
Safa presidential candidate concedes he has little time to campaign
Good governance, creating jobs and the professionalisation of refereeing headline Safa presidential hopeful Solly Mohlabeng’s plan of action ahead of the June 25 polls.
Mohlabeng, who is president of Safa Tshwane, and Ria Ledwaba were cleared on Monday to challenge incumbent Danny Jordaan for the Safa presidency at the football mother body’s upcoming elective congress.
Mohlabeng has disclosed the key points of his manifesto.
“At the moment Safa lacks good governance. I want to change that. The organisation’s laws are being chopped and changed, that’s not good governance. There must also be separation of responsibilities because at the moment there’s duplicate leaders throughout,” Mohlabeng told Sowetan yesterday.
“You find a person being a president of a region and a PEC [provincial executive committee] member at the same time. That by itself compromises the product at different levels. What do you expect when you have part-time referees? The officiating will always be shoddy. Refereeing should be professional in this country, especially after we hosted the World Cup in 2010, we shouldn’t have dropped that standard.”
Mohlabeng, who was born and bred in Avon in Limpopo, explained how he would use football for job creation, should he oust Jordaan, who’s been leading Safa since 2013.
“Football, by its nature, has the ability to create jobs. At the moment we have NSL [the National Soccer League] as the only professional structure but we have the potential to make the [ABC] Motsepe League a professional setup as well. We can achieve that by starting to look at article 16 of the Safa statutes, which is club licensing. ABC clubs must be properly regulated,” Mohlabeng stated.
Mohlabeng admitted being cleared to challenge Jordaan almost two weeks before the elections has not given him adequate time to canvass. “I am happy I was cleared to contest but it’s a bit too late to campaign thoroughly. However, I will do my best to get my manifesto across all the regions and its members,” said Mohlabeng.
Meanwhile, it’s not yet clear if Nomsa Mahlangu will appeal after she was disqualified to stand for the presidency. Mahlangu wasn’t reached for comment yesterday.