{"id":43848,"date":"2026-08-26T16:00:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T14:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&p=43848"},"modified":"2026-08-26T21:49:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T19:49:05","slug":"sa-parliament-told-of-alleged-fraud-in-safa-regional-elections","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/sa-parliament-told-of-alleged-fraud-in-safa-regional-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"SA Parliament told of alleged fraud in SAFA regional elections"},"content":{"rendered":"
The highly contested South African Football Association (SAFA) elections were one of the topics that took centre stage at the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee of Sport, Arts and Culture meeting.<\/div>\n
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SAFA Vice-President Bennet Bailey alleged regional election irregularities in the Sarah Baartman region in the Eastern Cape this past weekend.<\/div>\n
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He says two SAFA National Executive Committee (NEC) members, Mzimkhulu Fina and Chris Tyhawana, aligned with the Football Transformation Forum (FTF), arrived at the regional elections with auditors\u2019 vetting forms and results without the auditors present at the congress.<\/div>\n
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Bailey alleges that these vetting results excluded candidates who do not support SAFA President Danny Jordaan\u2019s re-election.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe elections were supposed to take place on Saturday, but SAFA, via our Chief Executive Officer, deployed two people who are not part of the membership committee. These nominations were sent to the audit firm, but mysteriously the audit firm said on Saturday that they are not available to attend.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe delegates who were in attendance submitted their proof that the document produced by the auditing firm is wrong. Mzimkhulu Fina and Chris Tyhawana argued that it should be accepted and that the elections will be conducted according to that document, but the LFA stood their ground.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Sarah Baartman is one of the eight regions in the EC, the second biggest province for SAFA in terms of regions after KwaZulu-Natal (11 regions). Bailey, who is part of the Save Our SAFA (SOS) lobby group behind AmaZulu owner Sandile Zungu\u2019s campaign, went on to explain that the auditors have disowned those vetting forms, and said a case has since been opened with the police.<\/div>\n
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SABC Sport recently interviewed the Chairperson of Save Our SAFA, Lebogang Riet, the lobby group behind Zungu\u2019s presidential campaign, who complained that regional elections were stolen.<\/div>\n
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He revealed that they had sent letters to SASCOC, CAF and FIFA to intervene, but there was no response. Bailey reiterated those words and said the elections won\u2019t be free and fair.<\/div>\n
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Portfolio Committee member Marlon Daniels of Patriotic Alliance stopped short of saying these elections won\u2019t be free and fair.<\/div>\n
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He questioned why SASCOC has not been responding to letters from the SOS, questioning impartiality in this matter.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThis is not healthy, and I want to know what role SASCOC is going to play because I\u2019m disturbed, but not surprised that SASCOC did not respond to communication sent to them. If memory serves me well, we had the same challenges the last time we had another federation here, and SASCOC was dragging their feet.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cI see the same movie playing out, and I see SASCOC doing what they usually do, which is not standing up and being firm. The upcoming SAFA elections are a mess, and it may not be fair, and if that\u2019s the case it will be hijacked.\u201d<\/div>\n
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The SAFA elections are only three weeks away (12 September 2026), and the SAFA Governance Committee is expected to announce the names of the people who will be eligible for the elections on Friday.<\/div>\n
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\u2014SABC\u2014<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":41704,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-43848","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Bailey alleges that these vetting results excluded candidates who do not support SAFA President Danny Jordaan\u2019s re-election.","published_date":"","news_description":"Bailey alleges that these vetting results excluded candidates who do not support SAFA President Danny Jordaan\u2019s re-election.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/43848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/43848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43849,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/43848\/revisions\/43849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=43848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}