The broken whistle: how systemic corruption at SAFA is killing South African football

The promising midfielder from Soweto, Amogelang Sipho Dhlamini, had stopped answering his phone. For three months, his stipend from the regional development academy had not arrived. His boots were worn through. His family, who had sacrificed to support his dream, now needed him to find work, any work. By the time the payment finally came, he had already left football.
He is one of thousands.

Across South Africa, the infrastructure of football is crumbling not from lack of resources, but from their systematic disappearance. In KwaZulu-Natal, a youth league that once served 200 players shut down in 2023 after promised Legacy Trust funds never materialised. In the Eastern Cape, referees worked without stipends for months, their complaints met with bureaucratic silence, according to some Eastern Cape Sasol League officials who spoke to Play the Game on condition of anonymity. 

In Johannesburg, even Banyana Banyana, the national women’s team fresh from World Cup qualification, staged a pay standoff before the 2023 tournament, highlighting chronic underpayment that has become structural rather than the exception, ESPN reported.

The money, in fact, has been somewhere very specific. And tracing its path reveals not just financial irregularity, but governance collapse at the South African Football Association (SAFA), an institution that was meant to be the custodian of the nation’s most beloved sport, but which instead became a case study in how systematic corruption can hollow out an organisation from within.

The World Cup's legacy trust turned into a financial black hole

The numbers tell a story of vanishing millions.

According to SAFA records, the 2010 FIFA World Cup Legacy Trust was established with 100 million US dollars (approximately R450 million at 2011 exchange rates) to ensure South Africa’s football infrastructure would benefit for generations. Over its lifetime, the trust generated R160 million in interest, creating a fund of over R600 million designated specifically for youth development, coaching programs, regional infrastructure, and grassroots initiatives.

By 2021, when the trust was dissolved prematurely, R547 million had been disbursed according to multiple trustees including Federico Addiechi, who fired off a distress flare of an email (seen by Play the Game) that seems to suggest Jordaan lied to the NEC in 2021. Of this, R58.6 million went to “administrative expenses”: salaries, travel, gifts, and costs that multiple forensic reviews have flagged as irregularities rather than legitimate expenditure.

But the Legacy Trust is only the most visible element of a broader pattern.

In 2023, Bart Henderson, a certified fraud examiner commissioned by a former Trust trustee, whose  identity was not publicly disclosed due to client confidentiality, released “Offsides,” a 44-page forensic report that documented what he termed “systematic misuse” of SAFA finances. The report identified over R600 million in questionable transactions since 2013, including:

• Payments reflected in the account highlighted a major financial red flag indicating that funds were likely misappropriated through a deliberate scheme to bypass internal controls and legal requirements
• Invoices submitted after payments had already been processed
• Procurement processes that bypassed standard internal controls
• Repeated payments to a small cluster of companies, many with opaque ownership structures
• Authorisation patterns that concentrated decision-making power in the hands of a few executives

Henderson’s findings were corroborated by internal SAFA documents leaked to investigators: screenshots of payment records, email chains showing approval bypasses, and expenditure reports that documented a pattern of financial decision-making that operated outside the organisation’s own stated governance procedures.

In October 2025, the Pretoria High Court ordered SAFA to disclose Legacy Trust records including financial documentation related to an alleged 10 million US dollar payment connected to the 2010 World Cup bid. 

As of December 2025, partial compliance by one of SAFA’s regions, the Tshwane Regional Football Association (TRFA), revealed discrepancies in grant allocations: funds earmarked for regional leagues redirected to executive expenses, and development program budgets absorbed into administrative costs. 

In a 13 December press statement, the region said that it had come to its attention in October that year that funds ranging between R500,000.00 and R750,000.00 had been misappropriated from the association’s bank account. 

This theft has left the association in a precarious financial position, unable to fulfil vital obligations, including paying staff salaries and disbursing conditional grants to affiliate members from sponsorship funds.

Meanwhile, SAFA’s operational debts have mounted. Regions report receiving no Legacy Trust disbursements for 17-18 months. Grassroots programs have been starved of funding. A leaked internal memo from 2023 showed R40 million in designated grants redirected without explanation. 

The contrast is stark, while regional coaches go unpaid and youth academies close, SAFA executives continued to travel business class, host high-profile events, and maintain expenditure patterns disconnected from the organisation’s stated financial constraints.

Budgets could not be discussed in SAFA

How does an organisation entrusted with billions in sponsorships, broadcasting rights, FIFA grants, and donor funds reach a point where it cannot pay its own staff?

The answer lies not in a single act of corruption, but in the systematic erosion of governance structures designed to prevent exactly this outcome.

Speaking to Play the Game, former SAFA employees describe an institutional culture where financial decision-making became increasingly centralised and opaque. They indicated that standard procurement processes,as well as the bureaucratic safeguards meant to ensure transparency and accountability,were routinely bypassed. Internal audits were ignored. Oversight mechanisms existed on paper but were rendered irrelevant in practice.

“The culture was obedience,” said one former senior administrator who spoke to Play the Game on condition of anonymity. “If something came from the top, you didn’t question it. You processed it. The people you would escalate concerns to were often involved in the same transactions.”

SAFA’s National Executive Committee (NEC) ballooned to 47 members, triple the global average for football associations – creating a structure more conducive to patronage than accountability. The organisation has cycled through nine CEOs in 14 years, a turnover rate that signals not just instability but the absence of institutional continuity necessary for effective governance.

Former vice-president Ria Ledwaba, who was ousted in 2022 amid internal power struggles, said in a telephone interview that board meetings became “exercises in evasion” in which questions about budgets were systematically shut down. 

Former CEO Dennis Mumble, testifying before Parliament in June 2025, accused SAFA leadership of misrepresenting the Legacy Trust’s governance structure and operational independence.

According to sources at SAFA House, constitutional violations compounded financial mismanagement. 

“Terms were extended without proper electoral processes,” one source said. They added that critics within SAFA structures found their contracts not renewed without explanation or were sidelined from decision-making. Whistleblower protections, in theory robust, proved theoretical in practice.

A mid-level accountant documented how money moved in SAFA

“Thandi” (not her real name) spoke to Play the Game about her experiences of the institutional environment that enabled systematic financial irregularities.

A mid-level accountant in SAFA’s finance department, Thandi began noticing discrepancies in 2016: payments that did not correspond to any contracts she could locate, invoices from companies she had never encountered in SAFA’s vendor databases, expenditures categorised as “consulting fees” or vague “project costs” without supporting documentation.

When she requested clarification, she was told approvals came from “above her pay grade” or that the CFO had personally authorised the transactions. By 2018, Thandi had quietly compiled an archive: screenshots of payment records, copies of invoices, internal email chains showing patterns of expenditure that bypassed standard controls.

But reporting internally felt pointless – the people she would escalate to were implicated in the transactions. Going to the authorities felt dangerous. She had a mortgage, children, and a clear understanding of South Africa’s troubled history of whistleblower retaliation.

For years, the documents stayed hidden.

The breakthrough came in late 2022 when Thandi learned, through an intermediary, that Henderson was investigating Legacy Trust records. They met in a Sandton parking garage, speaking from their cars, engines idling – a scene Thandi later described as “like something from a spy movie, except I was terrified.”

What she handed over that night was not a single smoking gun, but an internal map of how money moved through SAFA, and crucially, how often it moved without scrutiny. Henderson would cross-reference her documentation with bank statements, contracts, and third-party data.

Patterns emerged: links between individuals, repeated payments to specific entities, and approval processes that clustered around a small group of decision-makers.
The picture was no longer anecdotal. It was structural.

The immense power of Danny Jordaan

SAFA’s governance collapse cannot be understood in isolation. It exists within multiple overlapping systems, political, continental, and global,each of which has, in different ways, enabled rather than prevented the organisation’s institutional decay.

First, the importance of Danny Jordaan’s tenure as SAFA president since 2013 and his prominence in South African football since securing the 2010 World Cup bid cannot be underestimated, nor can it be separated from his political connections.

A former anti-apartheid activist and ANC parliamentarian, Jordaan cultivated relationships deep within the ruling party. He chaired parliamentary committees, advised ministers, and positioned himself as a symbol of post-apartheid sporting achievement. In a country where football carries profound political and social meaning, this positioning proved protective.

When allegations of financial mismanagement surfaced periodically in South African media, Jordaan survived. Internal SAFA structures closed ranks. External oversight was slow to materialise. Critics were dismissed as politically motivated or, in the context of transformation debates, as undermining black-led institutions.

This political capital created a buffer that delayed accountability. It was not until forensic evidence - documented, cross-referenced, legally actionable - was accumulated that law enforcement intervened.

SAFA is one of many African football associations in crisis

Second, SAFA’s crisis is not unique in African football, but symptomatic of a broader governance malaise across the continent.

In Ghana, the 2018 Anas Aremeyaw Anas exposé revealed systematic match-fixing and bribery, toppling the Ghana Football Association leadership. In Kenya, the Football Kenya Federation has faced repeated dissolution amid embezzlement allegations. In Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Football Association has cycled through governance crises, with similar patterns of financial opacity and administrative dysfunction.

The common threads: weak institutional capacity, FIFA funds flowing into associations with minimal oversight, and governance structures where power becomes concentrated and accountability mechanisms prove ineffective.

African football, despite producing world-class talent, struggles with chronic underdevelopment of domestic infrastructure. National teams increasingly rely on diaspora players developed in European systems because the pathways from grassroots to elite level have eroded domestically – not from lack of talent, but from governance failure that starves development programs of resources while administrative structures consume them.

FIFA does not provide real oversight 

Third is the role of FIFA, whose relationship with member associations like SAFA reveals the limitations of international oversight.

FIFA’s “non-interference” principle, designed to protect football federations from government meddlingcreates a paradox: it can also shield failing administrations from accountability. FIFA can suspend associations for government interference, but its capacity or willingness to intervene in internal governance failures has proven limited.

After the 2015 reforms following FIFA’s own corruption scandals, the organisation introduced ethics committees, term limits, and governance benchmarks. FIFA's “Forward” program now channels millions into member associations annually for development. Yet oversight of how these funds are used remains remarkably light.

FIFA audited the Legacy Trust via Ernst & Young, issuing clean reports that have since been contradicted by forensic investigations revealing significant irregularities. When Henderson’s report detailed systematic governance failures, FIFA declined substantive comment, citing “ongoing legal matters.”

The disconnect is glaring. FIFA can audit compliance with technical statutes but appears structurally incapable of – or uninterested in – confronting entrenched governance failures within member associations until external law enforcement intervenes.

In this sense, SAFA’s crisis raises uncomfortable questions about FIFA’s reform rhetoric. Does “good governance” programming address systemic issues, or does it provide a veneer of legitimacy while local power structures remain unchanged?

FIFA’s priority on stability – ensuring associations can organise competitions and maintain continental representation – can override accountability when the two come into conflict.

The legal reckoning began in 2023

What finally pierced the protective layers around SAFA’s leadership was evidence that could not be dismissed, delayed, or deflected.

By 2023, forensic findings had reached South Africa’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, the Hawks. Bank records corroborated internal documents. Transactions could be traced. Authorisations matched to individuals.

In November 2024, Danny Jordaan was arrested on fraud and theft charges totalling R1.3 million. The charges stemmed from allegations that he misused SAFA funds for personal security services and public relations expenditure following 2017 rape allegations (which Jordaan denies and which remain legally unresolved).

The co-accused include SAFA’s chief financial officer Gronie Hluyo, businessman Trevor Neethling, and former acting CEO Russell Paul (the latter was arrested in November 2025) for allegedly backdating contracts to create documentation for payments already made.

The case originated from a 2020 complaint by former SAFA National Executive Committee member Willie Mooka, who characterised the organisation as having become “a milk cow for personal gain.”  

The investigation has been methodical but slow – procedural delays, recusal applications, and defence motions have postponed the trial multiple times. As of December 2025, proceedings are scheduled to begin in February 2026.

In March 2024, a Hawks raid on SAFA headquarters seized laptops and documents, uncovering additional irregularities. PwC, SAFA’s auditors, had resigned in 2019, citing reputational risk – an early warning signal that went unheeded by FIFA and other oversight bodies. 

On December 5, 2025, Jordaan appeared at Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court, flanked by lawyers, trailed by cameras. For nearly a decade, he had projected an image of untouchability – an administrator with liberation credentials, political connections, and the global prestige of having helped deliver the 2010 World Cup.

Inside the courtroom, packed with journalists and court officials shuffling files thick with bank records and forensic summaries, that authority appeared diminished. The symbolism was unavoidable: for the first time, the president of South African football was answering to a criminal court.

Jordaan pleaded not guilty. His supporters framed the case as political persecution. His lawyers challenged procedural details. SAFA issued statements affirming stability and continuity.
But proceedings were adjourned. Outside, Jordaan walked past reporters without comment.

SAFA routinely denies all allegations

SAFA’s response to the accumulated allegations has been consistent: deny, deflect, and characterise criticism as motivated by ulterior agendas.

The organisation insists the Legacy Trust was managed lawfully under FIFA oversight. It points to audit reports as evidence of compliance. It describes Henderson’s forensic investigation as “rubbish” and filed defamation charges against him – charges that have not prevented courts from ordering disclosure of records.

When confronted with unpaid staff and stalled programs, SAFA has blamed “cash-flow challenges,” citing the economic impact of COVID-19 and delayed sponsorship payments. Yet former employees note that even as operational budgets were described as constrained, executive travel and event hosting continued unabated.

SAFA’s official communications emphasise transformation, development programs, and the organisation’s role in post-apartheid nation-building. Criticism, in this framing, becomes an attack on these achievements rather than accountability for how resources meant to advance them were actually deployed.

But this narrative has worn thin under the weight of evidence. Court-ordered disclosures have revealed financial irregularities that SAFA’s public statements cannot explain away. The gap between official assurances and documented reality has become too wide to bridge with rhetoric.

The issue is bigger than one president 

South African football stands at an inflexion point.

The immediate crisis is financial: mounting debts, unpaid staff, starved development programs, and an institutional reputation in tatters. Sponsors grow wary. FIFA’s continued silence raises questions about whether international oversight will ever meaningfully intervene.

But the deeper crisis is institutional. SAFA’s governance collapse did not happen overnight. It resulted from years of accumulated failures: weak oversight, compromised internal controls, political protection, and a culture that discouraged dissent and punished questions.

Even as criminal proceedings continue, fundamental questions remain unanswered:

• Where, precisely, did the money go?
• Who benefited from the systematic circumvention of governance procedures?
• How many warnings, from auditors, from whistleblowers, from former executives, were ignored before law enforcement finally intervened?

For investigators like Henderson, the danger now is that accountability stops at individuals rather than systems. “You can arrest a president,” he notes during an interview with radio host Robert Marawa, “but if the structures that enabled him remain unchanged, you’ve only paused the problem, not solved it.”

For whistleblowers like Thandi, the outcome remains uncertain. Her career has stalled. Her anonymity remains her shield. She watches developments from a distance, hoping the truth she helped uncover will not be buried by legal technicalities or political pressure.

“I didn’t do this to destroy football,” she told Play the Game during an interview. “I did it because football matters. And because what was happening was wrong.”

For the young midfielder from Soweto who stopped answering his phone, for the youth league that closed in KwaZulu-Natal, for the referees working without stipends, for Banyana Banyana staging pay protests, the question is simpler but more urgent: Will South African football survive this crisis with its integrity – and its future, intact?

The answer depends not just on courtrooms, but on whether the systems that govern South African football can be rebuilt with transparency and accountability at their foundation. It depends on whether FIFA will finally move beyond audit checklists to address the governance vacuum it has, through inaction, helped perpetuate.

And it depends on whether enough people – within SAFA, within South African society, within the global football community – decide that the beautiful game deserves better than the institutional decay that has characterised its recent governance.

At Palm Ridge, proceedings were adjourned. The game, for now, continues.

But the era of unquestioned authority may finally be over. What comes next will determine not just who leads South African football, but whether it can be led at all.