The South African Football Players Union (SAFPU) says it will do everything possible to get the attention of the South African Football Association (SAFA) leadership to resolve the impasse of unpaid bonuses.

Both Bafana Bafana and Banyana Banyana have not received match bonuses since September.

SAFA allegedly owes players in the region of R6 million. The president of the cash-strapped Football Association, Danny Jordaan, will be appearing at the Specialized Commercial Crimes Court sitting in Palm Ridge, on charges of fraud and theft, for a second time on Thursday.

The 73-year-old Jordaan will be back in court on Thursday morning after first appearing three weeks ago. The SAFA president is accused of misusing R1.3 million of SAFA funds for personal gain.

The charges against Jordaan include fraud, theft, and irregularly using SAFA funds to hire a communications company to manage his image. This was after rape allegations by former African National Congress MP, Jennifer Ferguson, surfaced.

SAFA will have a two-day meeting on the 17th and 18th of this month to discuss various issues emanating from the arrest of Jordaan, and SAFA Chief Financial Officer, Gronie Hluyo three weeks ago.

Jordaan’s immediate future and whether he should step aside or not is expected to be a hot topic of discussion at this meeting. In the meantime, SAFA seems to be putting out fires on more than one front. The non-payment of national players is a major issue, and it’s gloves off for the South African Football Players Union.

“You would understand that we are the voice of the players. Players can’t go out and speak to SAFA themselves. They are scared of being victimized and therefore we stand on their behalf, we want to address issues that need to be addressed for players to clear their minds as well so that when they go and perform their duties they are freed from any kind of stress,” says Tebogo Monyai, SAFPU Acting President.

But what concerns the Players Union is that it’s tried to address the issue of non-payment of players bonuses without much success.

“We reached out to SAFA the South African Football Association through its CEO, COO, the President himself, we addressed these issues via our request for a meeting. We outlined the issues that need to be discussed on the agenda, we requested for a meeting up to now we still waiting for the availability of the leadership from their side,” Monyai added.

Monyai admits that their relationship with SAFA deteriorated following the impasse relating to bonuses for Banyana Banyana ahead of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in July 2023.

“The relationship between ourselves SAFPU and federation has been quite good for quite a while up until the issue of Banyana Banyana going to the world cup where we stood up for the players afterwards the relationship seemed to be sour because SAFA now took that engagement negatively and we are not negative. We are addressing issues of the players at any given time,”

SAFA admits that it owes players match fees due to cash-flow problems but hopes to resolve the matter before the end of December.