Danny Jordaan’s iron grip on the South African Football Association (Safa) was maintained when he fended off a challenge from businessman and AmaZulu owner Sandile Zungu at the 2026 elections held on 12 September in Midrand. Jordaan’s 157 votes to Zungu’s 82 represented the closest contest at a Safa elective congress since the first time he became its president in 2013.
In 2018, former Premier Soccer League referee Ace Ncobo pulled out of the elections at the last minute – handing Jordaan an unchallenged run-in.
In 2022, Jordaan was challenged by his former vice-president, Ria Ledwaba, as well as former Safa Tshwane president Solly Mohlabeng. He defeated them comfortably, but they accused him and his allies of illegally amending Safa’s constitution just before the elective congress.
Ledwaba and Mohlabeng have since approached numerous courts in an attempt to overturn the 2022 electoral outcome. They also challenged their loss of standing in Safa’s structures. However, all these efforts have failed and Safa announced soon after Jordaan’s latest re-election that it will be trying to recover all its legal costs from the duo.
That is the power and cunning that Jordaan possesses. Court cases or not, he is constant. Love him or hate him, there is no denying that the 75-year-old is politically astute. How else does one explain his re-election for a record-extending fourth term at Safa House?
This is despite Safa’s finances being in the abyss. In December 2024, the organisation had to speed-dial Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie for an advance on its annual government grant just so that it could pay staff.
Over the past four years regional structures have also had to forego the monthly grants they are supposed to receive from South Africa’s national governing body of soccer as a result of Safa’s financial woes under Jordaan.
Then there is the not-so-small matter of Jordaan facing allegations of fraud and theft of Safa funds. His case has been running for two years and it is still in its pretrial phase. He has taken his political dexterity into the court of law, using his legal team to delay proceedings at every turn, despite the State saying it is ready to proceed with the matter formally.
Since being arrested in 2024 alongside Safa financial officer Gronie Hluyo, as well as public relations company owner Trevor Neethling, Jordaan has maintained his innocence. Ironically, this legal matter has to do with him allegedly hiring Neethling’s company to spruce up his public image ahead of the 2018 elective congress.
The move came after Jordaan was publicly accused of rape in October 2017 by South African singer and former parliamentarian Jennifer Ferguson, for an incident that allegedly took place in Gqeberha in the early 1990s. Ferguson later filed a formal criminal complaint with the police, but the case was eventually dropped because of a lack of evidence.
So, 2026 is not the first time that Jordaan has been re-elected by Safa’s members despite a dark legal cloud hovering over his head. This speaks to both his allegedly dictatorial leadership style, which sees his opposers ostracised, and the lack of principles of the people who continue to keep him in power in Safa.
Former presidential hopeful Ncobo once said: “Danny Jordaan is a very strong leader. He is able to exercise the patronage system that he has entrenched in Safa to his benefit. It’s not an easy system to dismantle.
“He’s got his puppies that he sends around to speak on his behalf. He’s a strongman. If he was not as strong as he is, he would have been out already.”
Defended and adored
This may be true, judging by Safa’s interactions with Parliament in particular. Trusted affiliates of Jordaan have consistently and ferociously defended their leader from attacks on his integrity and his grip on power from members of the Portfolio Committee on Sport, Arts and Culture.
In fact, his most loyal supporters would probably be willing to accept martyrdom on his behalf. It does not matter to them that when he attends his fraud court case at the Palm Ridge Magistrates’ Court, he is sometimes so frail that he has to hang on to people’s shoulders because he struggles to walk.
Then again, considering that he is a masterful player of politics, this could be an act to gain sympathy.
Jordaan, a former mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay in the Eastern Cape, knows how to play this game extremely well.
Unfortunately, as he and his supporters flex their muscles and influence within the Safa structures, it is South African soccer that suffers.
Yes, some of the men’s and women’s national teams have done relatively well, over the past four years in particular. But how much better could they have done had Safa’s integrity not been so compromised, at least as far as public perception is concerned? Jordaan has consistently blamed the media for the public’s view of Safa being compromised, particularly since his arrest two years ago.
South African soccer suffers
One of Jordaan’s biggest supporters is Safa Overberg president Tankiso Modipa. He also heads a pro-Jordaan lobby group in the federation, the Football Transformation Forum. In the run-up to the federation’s recent elections members of its rival group, Save Our Safa, backed Zungu.
Such divisions hark back to the battles in the ANC when the pro-Cyril Ramaphosa camp was pitted against the “radical economic transformation” faction. The latter was aligned to former president Jacob Zuma and supported by figures such as Free State strongman Ace Magashule. Of course, while these internal ANC battles were taking place, citizens continued – and continue – to suffer.
It’s the same in the ecosystem of South African soccer, as Jordaan ally Modipa somewhat admitted on the African Football Connect podcast ahead of the 2026 Safa elections.
“People want to fund people who are going somewhere. At Safa, we fight more [among ourselves]. No one from the commercial world would want to come and invest the money here, even myself… We spend more time fighting one another,” Modipa said.
“One key area we are focusing on going forward is to ensure we have our own funding model, which will come from the National Executive Committee that will be deployed after the 12 September elections, so that we don’t rely on anyone else. We rely on our own membership in order to go forward,” he added.
One thing Jordaan and his backers, such as Modipa, forget is that they may be soccer politicos who are backed by fellow soccer politicos, but in the bigger scheme of things they are there to serve South African soccer and its supporters. They are accountable to the public, not just the codes they have created for themselves in Safa. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
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Facts Only
* Danny Jordaan received 157 votes to Sandile Zungu’s 82 in the 2026 elections held on September 12 in Midrand.
* Former Premier Soccer League referee Ace Ncobo withdrew from the 2018 elections.
* Ria Ledwaba and Solly Mohlabeng challenged Jordaan’s 2022 electoral outcome and loss of standing in Safa structures through court cases, which failed.
* Safa announced an intention to recover legal costs from Ledwaba and Mohlabeng.
* Jordaan faces a two-year pretrial case regarding fraud and theft of Safa funds involving arrest in 2024 alongside Gronie Hluyo and Trevor Neethling.
* The legal matter involves allegations regarding the hiring of public relations services for the 2018 congress.
* Safa had to request an advance on a government grant from Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie in December 2024 to pay staff.
* Regional structures forewent monthly grants from the national governing body due to Safa's financial status under Jordaan’s leadership.
* Former presidential hopeful Ace Ncobo stated that Jordaan exercises patronage.
Executive Summary
Full Take
The dynamic presented involves a tension between entrenched political power, legal maneuvering, and institutional decay. The pattern suggests that concentrated authority, irrespective of accountability structures, can withstand external challenges through strategic legal delay and the mobilization of allied interests. The context implies a systemic failure where financial instability within Safa is leveraged to maintain leadership, leading to a prioritization of internal political battles over the welfare of the soccer ecosystem. The narrative shifts between institutional governance (elections, constitutional disputes) and personal accountability (fraud allegations), often framing the leader’s defense through an appeal to loyalty rather than demonstrated systemic integrity. The contrast between Jordaan's perceived "political astuteness" and the organization's financial abyss highlights a divergence between personal maneuvering at the apex and tangible consequences for the wider sporting body and its supporters. This mirrors broader socio-political dynamics where localized power structures absorb diffuse public distress.
STEP 1 — DETECT SOURCE TYPE:
SKEPTICAL MODE
1. STEELMAN — The strongest narrative is that concentrated, legally defended political authority within Safa persists despite severe financial mismanagement and fraud allegations, supported by a network of loyal defenders who frame the leader as a strongman against external forces.
2. PATTERN SCAN — Patterns detected: Authority Game, Emotional Exploitation.
3. ROOT CAUSE — The paradigm driving this narrative is the entrenchment of patronage systems within an organization that suffers from financial insolvency, where legal and political dexterity functions to shield power rather than ensure governance. Assumptions include that loyalty supersedes procedural fairness and that external accountability mechanisms are ineffective against internal political structures.
4. IMPLICATIONS — The implications concern the erosion of public trust in sporting governance and the prioritization of personal or factional interests over institutional responsibility. The costs are borne by the public, the national soccer structure, and the integrity of the sport itself.
5. BRIDGE QUESTIONS — How does the pattern of internal political conflict within Safa relate to broader patterns of patronage observed in other segments of South African governance? What mechanisms could effectively insulate financial oversight from personal political influence within sporting federations? What is the long-term impact on athlete development when institutional integrity remains compromised by legal and financial instability?
6. COUNTERSTRIKE SCAN — A potential attack pattern would involve focusing solely on the financial failures as primary evidence, ignoring the political defense, and demanding immediate restructuring based purely on insolvency concerns. The content largely matches this critique in its focus on finance but underplays the role of the political contestation and legal strategy used to protect the status quo.
Sentinel — Human
The text is a commentary piece employing narrative storytelling to explore the intersection of political power, financial mismanagement, and public perception within South African football structures.