6 April 2021 – SAFA has 10 national teams and not only a single national team called Bafana Bafana.
The deliberate distortion is to create a false impression that Vision 2022 is a new name for Bafana Bafana.
Vision 2022 was initially envisioned after most of our national teams failed to qualify for major tournaments and Bafana Bafana failed to qualify for successive 2010 and the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations.
That failure by most of our national teams to qualify for major tourmaments, led to a long term vision to build an internationally competitive team by 2022.
The idea of this blueprint was to make sure that most if not all of our national teams qualify for global tournaments and constantly be among the top teams on the continent.
While failure by Bafana Bafana to qualify for Cameroon 2022 AFCON was a setback for Vision 2022, it is important to note that most of the targets of this blueprint were achieved and are in the process of being attained.
The process of correcting the 2010 and 2012 disappointments and subsequent failures by our other junior national teams was to ensure that all our national teams regularly qualify for major tournaments and remain among the top 3 on the African continent.
The u17 National Team managed to qualify for the FIFA World Cup in 2015 which consequently saw the u20 successfully qualifying for the World Cups in 2017 and 2019. That team was meant to graduate to u23 Olympic Team which also led to the team qualifying for successive Olympics in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 (later 2021).
These continuous successes by junior teams saw a record number of South African players getting contracts overseas and the number currently stands at a staggering 65 and still counting.
Vision 2022 was not only limited to national teams’ success but was spread across to include massive training in coaching education, referees and administration as well as infrastructural development.
It was under Vision 2022 that SAFA formed a ground-breaking National Women’s League which in turn resulted in a number of our women getting lucrative contracts with overseas clubs. Now, we have over 32 international players attached and playing regularly overseas and most will take part in coming international matches against Zambia and Botswana over the weekend.
As a result, Banyana Banyana qualified for the first FIFA World Cup in 2019 in France. In 2018, Banyana Banyana retained the COSAFA Cup title and have gone on to win the regional title a record 4 times in a row. It was in 2018 that they narrowly lost on penalties to Nigeria in the AWCON finals in Ghana in a tournament they didn’t lose a game in normal time.
It is also worth mentioning that all of our women national teams are coached by female coaches, all graduates of the Association’s coaching system.
So apart from all our junior national teams being among the top 3 on the African continent, they have consistently qualified for global major tournaments and most have done exceptionally well.
Our match officials are among the top best performers on the continent as seen by a huge number on the CAF and FIFA panels.
With the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 set to begin in a couple of months, we are confident that Bafana Bafana will atone for failure to qualify for Cameroon 2022 by going all the way.
It is important to note that the current Executive was voted into office at the end of 2013 and fully devised the Vision 2022 blueprint in 2014.
It is also critical to note that the current President served as the CEO of the 2006 FIFA World Cup bid from 1998-2000 and the 2010 bid from 2000-2004. He then ran the 2010 FIFA World Cup as the CEO from 2004-2012.
He was voted into office in September 2013 along with most of the current NEC members and this is the first half of the second term of this Executive.