South African Football Association - History

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.

• The Football Association of South Africa (FASA - for 'whites') who had joined FIFA in 1910 and latterly the 1952 but was suspended in 1962, again in 1964 and expelled from FIFA in 1976.
• South African Soccer Association (SASA - for 'Indians')
• South African Soccer Federation (SASF), the Federation were open to players of any ethnicity and was an affiliate of the South African Council on Sport.
• South African National Football Association (SANFA - for 'blacks'), which was the largest of the associations.

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 their first international match as World Cup quarterfinalists Cameroon came to play in three matches to celebrate the unity process. In September 1992, South Africa played its first junior international against Botswana at under-16 level in Lenasia and to date the country has entered a team in each of FIFA's and CAF's competitions, from under-17 to national team level, and also for the women’s team.

In the short space of six years, SAFA has achieved remarkable success with qualification for the World Cup finals in France in 1998, the title of African champions at the 1996 African Nations Cup finals, which the country hosted, and the runners-up berth in Burkina Faso two years later.

At under-20 level, South Africa were runners-up at the 1997 African Youth Championship in Morocco and qualified to play at the 1997 FIFA World Youth Championship in Malaysia.

At club level, Orlando Pirates won the prestigious African Champions Cup in 1995, the first club from the southern African region to take the title in more than 30 years of competition. Pirates were playing in the event for the first time and won the title away from home in the Ivory Coast to further amplify the magnificence of the victory.

Behind the scenes, SAFA has worked long and hard to provide the structures to take football to all levels of the South African community. There are now national age-group competitions from under-12 level up, qualified coaches working around the country and nine provincial affiliates, who are further divided into 52 regions.