THE South African Schools Football Association has suspended three schools and their managers for five years after they were found guilty of cheating at the recent Kay Motsepe Cup national finals.

THE South African Schools Football Association has suspended three schools and their managers for five years after they were found guilty of cheating at the recent Kay Motsepe Cup national finals.

The tournament was played at the University of Limpopo's Turfloop campus.

The suspended schools are Silindokuhle of KwaZulu-Natal, Rampo of Limpopo and Masizakhe of Mpumalanga. The managers are Vusmuzi Mthethwa (Silindokuhle), William Nkoana (Rampo) and Lucky Mtsweni (Mpumalanga).

Masizakhe's misconduct was discovered after one of their players used his younger brother's identity document. Silindokuhle had three players who were not pupils at the school. Rampo were found guilty of the same charges.

Sasfa's national coordinator Themba Tshabalala said the affected schools and managers should not participate in any football activities in the country for five years.

"We meted out this punishment because of our conviction of rooting out the cancer of corruption and cheating in schools football. We say it is unfair for coaches and managers to engage these boys in corruption.

"They had their chances long time ago, let them not blow chances of these youngsters," said a fuming Tshabalala yesterday.

"We will come up with a mechanism of ensuring that what happened at this level of the tournament does not happen at other levels in the future. We will continue to punish corrupt officials harshly to show other would-be cheats that we will not tolerate corruption."