Angry Safa employees lash out over late wages

Chaos, an absence of proper corporate governance and poor financial controls have been cited as the main reasons for the SA Football Association’s (Safa) failure to pay salaries timeously for the second time since December.

In a letter sent to employees after business hours on Monday, Safa confirmed it could not pay salaries “due to a delayed payment from one of our partners”. It promised the salaries would be paid by the end of this month.

Insiders, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisals, on Tuesday painted a grim picture of the turmoil at Safa House. They blamed the association’s hierarchy for the latest failure to pay employees’ salaries, just three months after their December salaries arrived late.

“How do you run such a key organisation without a proper budget?” queried one Safa official.

“It’s just pure incompetence. We are supposed to have a standing committee on finance to oversee what happens to the funds that come in. But that committee is basically nonexistent.”

Another insider pointed out Safa’s finances had become strained thanks to dwindling sponsorship income and because it can no longer dip into the Fifa Legacy Trust, which had more than R500m bequeathed to it after the 2010 Fifa World Cup but has since been dissolved.

“There has been a decline in sponsorship revenue in the last decade, and what did we do in that period? We dug into the Legacy Trust,” they said.

“Those funds have since dried up, and there’s nowhere to go now. The trust is depleted, but it helped hide these financial flaws.”

Another Safa staffer complained the association should have informed its employees earlier that salaries would not be paid by Tuesday so they could make arrangements with service providers.

“How can you send such a communique at night? It means you don’t value your employees as assets to the company. There are debit orders aligned to payday and if you inform us so late, we can’t make prior arrangements,” they said.

In addition to a decline in sponsorships, Safa is said to have not received any financial grant from Fifa over the last financial year after the association took a R22m “loan” from the world football governing body in the previous financial year.

“That R22m is reflected in the financial statement, but no-one can tell what it was used for,” said the angry employee. “We have to repay the loan at a rate of R500,000 every quarter, and finish it before Fifa grants us another loan. We had asked that [the] R22m be used to clear historical debts, but that didn’t happen.”

Safa posted a shortfall of R107m in its financial report for 2022-23. 

Safa CEO Lydia Monyepao, who was scheduled to speak at an event to introduce Honor as Safa’s new technology partner on Tuesday, did not show up at the event. Several attempts to reach her for comment on the late salary payment have been unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, the much-awaited Safa national executive committee meeting, which could decide embattled president Danny Jordaan’s future, is scheduled for this weekend — though it is unclear if it will go ahead.

“How can we have funds to hold an NEC meeting while our staff have not been paid?” queried another Safa official.

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