South African Football Association (SAFA) President Dr Danny Jordaan and several of his counterparts from the COSAFA region have endorsed Dr Patrice Motsepe to be re-elected as Confederation of African Football (CAF) President.
Dr Jordaan welcomed Botswana Football Association President Oabile Tariq Babitseng, Zambia’s Andrew Kamanga, Eswatini’s Peter Simelane and Malawi’s Fleetwood Haiya to SAFA House in Nasrec on Wednesday and they all said they are backing Dr Motsepe to be appointed for a second term during the CAF elections in March 2025.
The SAFA President said while most of the 14 member countries of COSAFA were not present at SAFA House, they are fully behind the re-election of Dr Motsepe and have already confirmed their support.
“I’ve spoken to all of the Presidents in the region and some of them could not be here with us, but they did send messages of support, and we want to explain why we are supporting the name of Dr Patrice Motsepe,” Dr Jordaan said.
“We did so the first time he served a term (in 2021) and now he is going for the second term. I think from our perspective, from their own perspective (the Presidents), there’s been significant improvement in CAF not just from a financial point of view, because very often you only look at the financial aspect, but also from a football point of view. We now have a CAF schools’ competition which starts in COSAFA and of course SAFA are the champion of both schools’ girls and boys. Then there is the Under 20 championship.”
'EXPONENTIAL GROWTH'
Dr Jordaan said football on the continent has grown in leaps and bounds under Dr Motsepe’s watch, with both the women’s and the men’s game continuing to show rapid development.
“Football has really shown exponential growth under the leadership of Dr Patrice Motsepe. From a CAF perspective, you know that CAF started off with a huge deficit. Andrew Kamanga sitting here next to me is the vice-chair of the CAF Finance Committee. He gave the financial report to the CAF Congress in Addis, Ethiopia, recently, and he can give you details on how that recovery happened.
“But simply to say that the most financially successful Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) was the recent one in Ivory Coast (in the beginning of the year) and it was a huge success, in terms of television viewership, in terms of revenue, ticket sales, global reach, all of it was just phenomenal. So given the background and the achievement over the period, we thought it’s best for us to endorse Dr Patrice Motsepe again for a second time.”
The regional Presidents that were present at SAFA House echoed Dr Jordaan and said Dr Motsepe came in during a challenging period for CAF in 2021, but he managed to turn things around and the continental body is heading in the right direction.
“So, the time that President Motsepe has been with CAF since 2021, the results are there to show. And for the sake of continuity and believing that we will even do much, much better, we think we need the stability and continuation of leadership. For that reason, we’ve resolved as members of COSAFA to support his candidacy to the next election in March 2025.” said President Kamanga.