3 July 2023 – The South African Football Association (SAFA) has noted the concerning and misleading utterances in the public domain attributed to the South African Football Players Union (SAFPU) claiming that it has a co-operative agreement with the Association.
This statement is false, distasteful and misleading as no such agreement is in place. It is an insult to the intellect of the nation. SAFA challenges SAFPU to produce a copy of such an agreement. As a trade union, they should know that there are particular processes that have to be followed.
1) They must prove their membership. We challenge them to produce a list of members who are women footballers.
2) They must produce the membership numbers and any payments made to the union by these members.
3) We further remind them that we have more than 400 000 women footballers. How many of them are members of this union? This union has continued to make bogus claims at will and we feel it is time to call them out. This is an insult to the intelligence of our nation. We challenge him on these three things.
These players have been nurtured and developed through SAFA structures. We have produced these teams through our development and investment, and we are proud of their achievements. FIFA, in a FIFA Congress, recognised the progress of SAFA in women’s football. This union sprung into action two weeks ago after FIFA announced the bonus payments to all the women footballers who will participate in the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Please find attached the letter from FIFA stating very clearly the allocation and what it is intended for.
SAFA must further inform the nation that FIFA’s funding is allocated to specific projects as you can see in this attached letter. FIFA operates on the basis that for any funding SAFA must sign what is called a contract of agreed objectives. The money is allocated in terms of the agreed objectives. And as pointed out in the letter, FIFA then comes and subjects the payments to their audit processes. So, SAFA cannot just use money allocated for one project to fund or use for a different purpose.
The claim of the union that they want to establish a professional league for women is laughable. They are not a structure of SAFA, nor are they a structure of the Confederation of African Football or any Football Federation. The union is a member of FIFPRO and the African Players union. They are not affiliated to SAFA, to CAF and to FIFA. This distinction must be understood and it is time that the Association tells the public the truth.
Click below to view FIFA Circular:
https://www.safa.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Circular-13_FWWC2023_increased-investments_EN.pdf