World Cup: the Minister of Sport orders Safa survey for the expensive deduction of Bafana points

The South Africa Minister of Sport, Gayton McKenzie, ordered a large -scale investigation into the administrative error at the South African Football Association (Safa) who led Bafana Bafana to be attracted three crucial points in their qualifying campaign of the FIFA 2026 FIFA World Cup

Bafana’s qualification hopes have undergone a serious setback after Fifa established that the team had deployed a non-admissible player, Teboho Mokoena, during their 2-0 victory over the Lesotho in March. Mokoena should have served a suspension for the accumulation of two yellow cards in the previous games of group C.

As a result, FIFA canceled the result of Polokwane, assigning a 3-0 victory to Lesoteho. The sanction fell of South Africa from 17 points to 14 and from the first to second place in group C – behind Benin, which now leads with a higher meta difference (+4 at +3 of South Africa).

In a strongly formulated declaration, McKenzie swore that his ministry would “arrive at the bottom” at the flask and guaranteed that the managers were considered to be taken to take into account.

“We commit ourselves to discovering the causes at the root of this failure and guaranteeing responsibility,” said McKenzie.
“A complete relationship will be completed and shared with the public to provide clarity and prevent future events”.

The minister also gathered support in Bafana Bafana in view of the last two qualifications against Zimbabwe and Rwanda in Durban and Mbombela next month-infixes who have now become unmissable encounters if South Africa has to keep their dream of the World Cup alive.

“Let’s go behind our kids in these critical games. Together we can and have to bring them to our shoulders in the United States, Canada and Mexico in 2026,” he urged.

In the meantime, Safa has confirmed that it will appeal to the FIFA sentence, but has not yet commented on the internal drops that led to the expensive administrative error.