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A football storm is brewing in Buffalo City with long-serving members of Safa Buffalo City breaking away from the body to form their own structure, stressing unhappiness with how the executive of the ruling body is running the game.
The group, who believe the sport is in disarray in the region, is spearheaded by former Gompo LFA chair Vukile Mlanjana who resigned in May, alleging “victimisation and dictatorship” by Safa Buffalo City president Mxolisi Sibam.
Mlanjani, together with ex-Bafana Bafana manager Zola Dunywa and former Safa Buffalo City executive member Gavin van Rooyen, said the reason for forming the breakaway structure was to revive football in the region, claiming it was dead because of poor administration by the current office.
They also said it was lagging in terms of development.
They pinpointed that there was disunity within the structure.
“After years of futile attempts to try to address Buffalo City Regional football concerns and failures through the Safa regional, provincial and national structures, a group of concerned Buffalo City football leaders have decided to establish a new Buffalo City Regional football structure that will serve the aims, objectives and needs of local football associations, its member clubs, youth and football communities,” Van Rooyen said.
According to Mlanjana, the “Buffalo City Football Region” structure includes selected members of the East London Central LFA, Qonce LFA, Mdantsane LFA, East London West LFA (Ncera), King East LFA (Bisho) and East London North LFA (Gompo) which are all part of Safa Buffalo City.
Mlanjana said they had secured three major sponsor partnerships that would be investing in the new regional concept.
“Regional inter-LFAs, seniors, juniors, and women football league and cup competitions are in the pipeline involving member affiliates,” he said.
Mlanjana indicated that more local football structures were expected to affiliate to the new regional structure, and plans were under way to assist and support those LFAs that were in the process of formulating their operational structures.
“Our football at the regional level is at its lowest,” Mlanjana said.
“There are no football programmes being offered at the regional level, and the disunity and division among our Local Football Associations regionally is extremely disheartening.
“Our clubs, footballers, officials and football communities ultimately suffer due to the poor state our football is in.
“We have within our new structure some exceptional football administrators and leaders who have many years of experience of playing and administering football at the highest level,” he said.
Contacted on Monday, Safa Buffalo City secretary and spokesperson Zolani Ngesmani said they were aware of the breakaway structure and labelled it “a bunch of rebels”.
“We have been hearing that there are meetings happening on the sidelines, but we will not entertain them.
“If they have concerns on how we do things, we have always opened a room for them to discuss that matter but all they always do is run to the media,” he said.
Ngesmani dismissed the claims that its affiliated members were part of the breakaway structure.
“We had a congress on the weekend and all our LFAs were there with their main executive members present, we mapped out a way forward for the association,” he said.
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