Dennis Mumble

The South African Football Association (Safa) has reinstated its chief and four other leading officials suspended over a match fixing scandal involving the national team. The move comes less than two weeks before we are to host the African Nations Cup finals.

These officials – including Safa president Kirsten Nematandani and acting CEO Dennis Mumble – were allegedly working with a group based in Singapore, Football 4U, in a bid to fix matches leading up the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

This came to light in a 500-page report handed over by Fifa to Safa last month. The document claims that the results of South Africa’s pre-World Cup warm-up matches against Thailand, Bulgaria, Colombia and Guatemala leading up the 2010 finals were fixed and implicated the those five officials. They were suspended in December, but reinstated over the weekend until the investigation is complete.

SAFA spokesperson Dominic Chimhavi:

We did not exonerate the group, but the committee that put them on special leave did not have the authority to do so. We are not sweeping this under the carpet, and the matter would be thoroughly investigated.

Chairman of Safa’s legal committee, Poobie Govindasamy, also confirmed that investigations will be ongoing:

At the end of the day, justice must be done and people who have been responsible for the misconduct have to dealt with severely.

Meanwhile, the ANC Youth League yesterday welcomed the reinstatement. Spokesperson Khusela Sangoni-Khawe says match-fixing is a serious allegation, and that the suspensions should not have occurred until the investigation had come to an end.

There should be due process before any decision of guilt or otherwise is assigned to an individual. We are saying the SAFA officials and its president should have been afforded an opportunity to clear themselves before they were suspended.

[Source: M&G]