Gayton McKenzie welcomes suggestions to transform Safa amid reports of Danny Jordaan investigation

Gayton McKenzie, the Patriotic Alliance (PA) leader and newly appointed Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, has welcomed the transformation of South African Football Association (Safa) amid an alleged investigation into Danny Jordaan by the Confederation of African Football (Caf).

Despite only being appointed on Sunday, McKenzie has already received some suggestions on how he should run the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture. One of the suggestions was from a sport enthusiast Palesa Motshoene, who advised the minister to transform Safa.

“Please deal with the transformation of Safa. Advocate for sport to be compulsory at school. Let there be an MOU [memorandum of understanding] between your department, education and higher learning institutions, specifically the sports departments, and have third and honours students become coaches and instructors at schools. Move that after school programme to be administered by them and allow teachers to just teach,” wrote Motshoene.

McKenzie responded by describing the advice as a “very great suggestion”.

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Caf investigates Jordaan

McKenzie’s appointment comes days after reports revealed that Caf was investigating the Safa president.

Over the weekend, reports came out that Caf appointed an independent committee, that includes South African advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, to probe Jordaan for alleged violations and breaches of Caf and Fifa statutes.

The Safa head offices were raided by the Hawks in March in connection with allegations of fraud and theft amounting to R1.3m linked to Jordaan.

The Hawks announced that they had seized a laptop, external hard drives, a USB and other documents during their raid.

The Hawks’ statement accused the Safa president of using the organisation’s resources for personal gain. The football association said it will institute civil action for defamation of character.

At the time, Safa described the raid as unlawful.

“We contend that this is unethical and unlawful as the police never mentioned anyone’s name in matters that are under investigation,” said a statement from Safa, released on Friday.

“We want to set it out from the onset that we believe the search was unlawful, malicious and not conducted in terms of the directives of a warrant given to us,” said the statement on Safa’s website.

Caf is led by South African businessman Patrice Motsepe.

The body that oversees African football raised its concerns about the respect for and image of the sport in the country after the highly publicised raid. Former sports minister Zizi Kodwa was also not happy.

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