JOHANNESBURG – Safa on Thursday said it would hold an extraordinary congress on April 28 to set a new date for its presidential elections, which were postponed last week.
Following what appeared to be pressure from Ace Ncobo, a presidential nominee alongside incumbent Danny Jordaan, the organisation announced the delay of the elections – many seeing this as a huge victory for Ncobo, after he’d accused Safa of “gross violation” of its statutes and that the process of attempting to have Jordaan re-elected was completely flawed.
But Safa chief executive Dennis Mumble on Thursday rebuffed the belief that Ncobo was instrumental in pressing the association to not go ahead with the March 24 elections.
“I want to reiterate that the reason for the postponement of our elective congress was at the recommendation of our (new) electoral committee. They could not complete the work that needed to be done in just three days,” Mumble explained while also apologising for not making that clear in a terse statement confirming the delay of the elections last week.
Ncobo had been successful in seeing to it that the Independent Electoral Committee (IEC) withdrew from overseeing the Safa elections three weeks prior, leaving the association to scramble for substitutes in the hope to still hold the elections on the scheduled date.
“Everything we did was according to the book, and we were working very well with the IEC until a very unconstitutional interference process occurred, which led to their withdrawal of that electoral committee – at a very late stage in the game, less than three weeks before the congress,” Mumble added.
“Our council or executive committee then had to regroup and elect a new electoral committee. The extraordinary congress will then ratify this new committee so they can get to work with the vetting process of the candidates.
“We will have a new date for the elections at that extraordinary congress, where we will also amend some of the things in the electoral code.
“We did nothing wrong. The Safa electoral code has been on our website for five years. Why is it suddenly controversial now and there are claims of misconduct?
“We’ve always done things by the book.”