SOCCER: Ahead of the game: How Safa chief Danny Jordaan keeps iron grip on power

South African soccer federation president Danny Jordaan has deftly swatted aside his critics and maintained his power at Safa House for 13 years.

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.