Irvin Khoza has lauded the National Soccer League, which turns 30 next year, saying it has come a long way since the dark days of apartheid when black people were considered unfit to even run their own households.
The chairperson of the league was addressing the Annual General Meeting of the National Soccer League, which is the custodian of the Premier Soccer League. The AGM is a platform to review the achievements and failures of the year under review.
Khoza said it was inescapable to do this year’s review without mentioning the milestone that the league will be achieving next year – thirty years of its existence. “Take a moment right now and think back to 1985.
“For the younger members in the room, this task might take them back to when they were babies. To me and the old timers and ladies in the room, it will pull us back to a moment when soccer led the way in creating a united front that proved that South Africans of all races could play sport and ultimately live all aspects of their lives on an equal platform.
“We will reach a point when the race discussion will require a context as everyone in the room would have been born in a free South Africa, where racial classification denotes only our differences in physical appearance,” Khoza said.
Year after year since 1985, Khoza said the league has grown from strength to strength, learning from its experience and building a self-determined future. “We will have an opportunity next year to relive the moments of truth that drove, challenged and strengthened us in these 30 years.
“This year, I have chosen to focus on the life lessons that we have learnt in that period, the first being that of self-determination. Commentators were adamant that club chairpersons would not be able to work towards common goals because we are competitors.
“We, according to their wisdom, required ‘independent’ people that would run the affairs of the league ‘fairly’, as black people then [in the apartheid years] were considered unfit to even run their own households. [But today] Our Board of Governors and Executive Committee model continues to be trend setting.
“It has proven that the members’ interests are best protected when run by those with ‘skin in the game’. Our self-determination model has, among other good things, brought about the realisation within members that leaks and attacks on each other in the media erode our equity.
“The days when sponsors worried about possible reputation risks when getting involved in our properties are over. Soccer ‘politics’ has been replaced by action in the field of play,”Khoza said.
