Bafana Bafana team manager Vincent Tseka.
A prominent administrator once told me a fundamental truth about leadership: through things such as professional behaviour, strong performances, striving for excellence an organisation builds up reputational equity — akin to a mattress — creating a safety net capable of helping absorb the impact of future mistakes to remain credible in the eyes of the public.
If we apply this metric to the South African Football Association (Safa), it is glaringly obvious that the governing body is sleeping on the cold, hard floor. Their latest administrative bungle, which saw Bafana Bafana’s departure for the 2026 Fifa World Cup in the US, Mexico, and Canada delayed due to unresolved visas, is just another symptom of a deeply rotten core.
The national controlling body has rightly been castigated from all quarters. Deputy Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Peace Mabe, hit the nail on the head when she labelled Safa's latest debacle as “shocking and embarrassing.” Her boss, Minister Gayton McKenzie, took it even further: "We are being made to look like fools."
Yet, the man at the helm remains entirely tone-deaf. To compound matters, Safa president Danny Jordaan attempted to brush his inept organisation’s mistakes under the carpet, going so far as to claim the visa delays could be used by Bafana as “extra motivation to do well.”
