Cosafa members back Motsepe for second term as Caf president

Five football associations in the Cosafa region have endorsed Patrice Motsepe for a second term as president of the Confederation of African Football (Caf).

This is after South African billionaire and Mamelodi Sundowns owner Motsepe last week announced he would avail himself to run for re-election at the Caf congress in March next year. 

Caf has no limits in terms of how many terms a president can serve, but Fifa, since 2017, has introduced a three-term limit. 

Led by Safa president Danny Jordaan in a press conference held at Safa House on Wednesday, presidents of the Zambia FA (Andrew Kamanga), Eswatini FA (Peter Simelane), Botswana FA (Tariq Babitseng) and Malawi FA (Fleetwood Haiya), confirmed they were backing Motsepe for a second term.

There are 14 members in Cosafa and Jordaan said “most of them” are backing Motsepe while he also believes more than 40 of the Caf's 54 associations will endorse the president, whose first term started in 2021. 

While Jordaan and the four other presidents showed enthusiasm in endorsing Motsepe, full support from Cosafa is not yet guaranteed, especially from islanders that include Comoros, Mauritius, Madagascar and Seychelles.

It is believed north African countries including Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria will be looking to back Cameroon legend Samael Eto'o if he decides to challenge Motsepe, as has been speculated.

Eto'o, the president the Cameroon FA, has not officially come out to say whether he will run for the Caf presidency. Those wanting to avail themselves for nomination have until November 12 to do so.

“We're here because it's election season. In this period we start with the election of Caf which is next year in March and Fifa later in the year,” Jordaan said. “I have spoken to all presidents in the [Cosafa] region; some of them cannot be here, but they've sent messages of support. We want to explain why we're supporting the name of Dr Patrice Motsepe. We did so the first time [in 2021] and he's going for the second term.”

The Safa president explained that their support is not because Motsepe comes from the same region as them, but is mainly because of what he's managed to achieve in his tenure.

One of the highlights of Motsepe's reign has been the reduction of the Caf deficit, which Kamanga, deputy chair of the finance committee at the African ruling body, said has been remarkable.

“We've seen significant improvement in Caf not just from the financial point of view but also from football,” Jordaan said. “We now have a Caf schools' competition that starts in Cosafa. Football has really shown exponential growth under the leadership of Motsepe.”

The Safa president highlighted the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast as a huge success under Motsepe's watch.

“In terms of television viewership, revenue, global reach, all of it is just phenomenal. Because of that achievement in this period we thought it's best for us to endorse Patrice Motsepe for a second term. We believe this will bring more success to African football.” 

Kamanga said Motsepe has done a lot of good work in his first term but the most impressive aspect was improving the financial situation of Caf, which was extremely dire when he took over in 2021.

“We'll go with Patrice Motsepe simply because he came in at the time when Caf were going through challenges,” the Zambian FA boss said. “It wasn't easy to pick up from where it was to where we are today. Financially, we were quite weak.

“We had challenges with marketing contracts to a point where our deficits were sitting at $45m in 2021.

“Over the years we've significantly reduced that to about $9m in the past financial year. The budget presented last week in Addis Ababa shows we'll have a positive balance of $11m [next year].

“Also there's lot that has been invested in football, especially in matters of match officiating. Referees have been taken care of, the number of coaching courses have increased.

“Even though the bottom line is showing we're still yet to come out of the negative, what is comforting is there's a lot of money coming in to support the exponential growth of all the football activities.” 

The Eswatini and Malawi presidents added that the transparency brought in under Motsepe is among reasons they will support him for a second term.