South African Football Association

The South African Football Association or SAFA is the governing body of football in South Africa.

History

The South African Football Association was founded on 8 December, 1991, the culmination of a long unity process that was to rid the sport in South Africa of all its past racial division.

Four disparate units came together to form the organisation in Johannesburg to set South African soccer on the road to a return to international competition after a lifetime of apartheid in soccer.

They were the Football Association of South Africa, the South African Soccer Association, the South African Soccer Federation and the South African National Football Association, who later withdrew from the process only to return again two years later.It was only natural that the game finally be united as the sport of soccer had long led the way into breaking the tight grip of racial oppression, written into South Africa’s laws by its successive apartheid governments.

A delegation of the SAFA received a standing ovation at the congress of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in Dakar, Senegal a month later, where South Africa were accorded observer status. South Africa’s membership of the world governing body FIFA was confirmed at their congress in Zurich in June, 1992.

Membership of CAF followed automatically and South Africa was back on the world stage, and we are honoured to be awarded the right to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

Within a month the country hosted...
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