Safa confirm Motlanthe as permanent CEO

The South African Football Association announced on Friday that they had appointed Advocate Tebogo Motlanthe as their Chief Executive Officer on a permanent basis.

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Motlanthe was given the role on as acting CEO in May of last year, after Gay Mokoena left the association in controversial circumstances, alleging he was forced out of the organisation by Safa president Danny Jordaan.

It is not the easiest time to be a CEO of Safa, with new sponsors tricky to get, and existing ones also needing to be kept happy in the midst of a global pandemic.

“These are difficult times, and continued engagement is needed to give them (our partners) mielage … soon we will announce one or two new commercial partners,” said Motlanthe, who has a law degree from the University of Venda and also holds a qualification in sports management from Wits business school.

Another of Motlanthe’s priorities is to assist Molefi Ntseki and his technical team as they hope to guide Bafana Bafana to the next Africa Cup of Nations finals in Cameroon and to the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar.

“We need to ensure we support … Bafana to qualify. We need to work with the technical team to give them administrative support to qualify for Afcon and the World Cup. With Covid you can’t just go where you want so we need to sit with them and find strategies.”

Safa Head of Medicine, Thulani Ngwenya, meanwhile, confirmed that all World Cup and Afcon qualifying matches are still scheduled to go ahead in the coming months, even in the face of the continuing pandemic.

“We are monitoring the situation and making sure there is compliance,” said Ngwenya.

“We are playing Ghana and Sudan (in March), but have engaged both embassies in meetings.”

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