• Safpu promised to fight Swallows to the bitter end if they act on the recommendation to dismiss 22 players.
• Swallows held an internal disciplinary hearing after the club’s failure to honour their last two matches in 2022.
• The PSL’s disciplinary committee punished Swallows for the no-show – and, in turn, the club charged players for misconduct.
• For more sports news, go to the News24 Sport front page.

The South African Football Players’ Union (Safpu) was scathing in its rebuke of Moroka Swallows’ conduct, alleging that the club put together a sham of a disciplinary hearing designed to help improve their compromised financial standing. 

In a leaked statement, the independent chair of Swallows’ internal disciplinary hearing recommended that the club dismiss 22 players with immediate effect following the Dube Birds’ failure to honour their last two fixtures in December last year. 

Swallows caused a stir when it announced it wouldn’t be able to take part in its last two games of 2023 against Mamelodi Sundowns and Golden Arrows due to “an unresolved dispute between the players and management”. 

Swallows didn’t state the nature of that disagreement, but it had to do with the non-payment of the players’ salaries.

The club’s coach, Steve Komphela, confirmed this after the 2-1 loss to SuperSport United on 15 December, saying that he had to persuade the players to honour the fixture against Matsatsantsa a Pitori because the players did not take part in training that week;  they hadn’t been paid some of the monies the club owes them.

The Premier Soccer League’s (PSL) disciplinary committee (DC) punished Swallows for the no-show. 

Sundowns and Swallows were each given three points, along with a 3-0 scoreline, while the Soweto club was fined R1 million.

However, R600 000 of that R1 million was suspended, which meant the club only had to pay R400 000 and the costs of the sitting. 

But before Swallows were sanctioned, the club announced in late December that it would bring charges of their own on its players for misconduct and being involved in what it deemed an illegal strike.

This led to the hearing where it was recommended that 22 players be dismissed, with rumours that more dismissals would follow. 

Safpu slammed how Swallows have handled the matter, questioning the independence of the chair who was appointed by the club.

In a statement, which Safpu president Thulaganyo Gaoshubelwe read out before taking questions from the media on Tuesday, the players’ union alleged that the club’s financial problems have been long-running – going as far back as when they gained promotion to the elite league in 2022. 

Safpu said the charges levelled against the players were trumped up and, once the recommendations are implemented, they will escalate the matter to the dispute resolution chamber and any other relevant tribunal. 

The union claimed that at no point did the players refuse to honour the fixtures, saying that the decision to cancel the matches was a “unilateral and autocratic” decision taken by the club’s chairperson, David Mogashoa. 

“This deceptive move is a clear attempt to evade financial responsibilities, including December salaries and outstanding payments,” the statement read. 

The union is representing the 22 players who have been dismissed, with the others whose matter hasn’t been finalised represented by either their agents or own lawyers.

Gaoshubelwe revealed that the monies Swallows owe its players include signing-on fees.

“This (financial) problem doesn’t start now,” said Gaoshubelwe.

“It is very important to underscore that point. We can safely say that the players of Moroka Swallows have been honouring the games without pay, because they have not been getting their salaries as they ought to – in relation with their own contracts of employment. This whole façade that the players refused to play because they were not paid, is just simply that – a façade. At the heart of it is to try and terminate the players’ contracts, and then renegotiate the contracts of the players.

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“The reality of the matter is that they (Swallows) had to do something, so that they charge the players and renegotiate. We can tell you, on record, that these people are currently pushing players to renegotiate their contracts. We have requested the club to give us the decision, the sanction. 

“Remember, the sanction that is out there is what the chairperson of the disciplinary hearing is suggesting and proposing to the club, to say 22 players must be fired with immediate effect. We have asked, ‘Are you adopting the decision of the DC because once you do that, we can then run and go to the relevant tribunals to do the cases?’ Where we are sitting at the moment is that it’s difficult for us to challenge that decision, because at the moment, the club has not adopted the recommendations.

“There are already players who are being pressured (with the club saying), come and let’s renegotiate…we think that a very evil and diabolical thing to do.”

The players’ union stopped short of calling the running of Swallows dysfunctional, revealing questionable conduct from a club that was a trendsetter at its peak. Swallows was the country’s first team to be registered as a public company in 1971. That year, it also became the first club to receive an official sponsorship when Teljoy partnered with the club. 

Those were the heydays. At its lowest – Swallows were relegated from the elite league right down to the amateur ranks in a massive fall from grace. The club couldn’t earn their way back to the elite league through the pitch, so Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi – a staunch supporter of the club – led the drive for its revival, culminating in purchasing a first division status in 2019 and eventually gaining promotion to the premier division in 2022. 

The current state of Swallows is lower than the depths of when they were languishing in the amateur ranks.

“The players have not even been receiving their salary slips,” said Gaoshubelwe. 

“One of the fundamental reasons why the players must have their payslips is the issue of the UIF (Unemployment Insurance Fund). The players haven’t been paid for the whole of December, [and subsequently] they can’t go to labour to ask for their monies and UIF. The league has a role to play there.”

Mogashoa didn’t answer calls from News24 or respond to the questions that were sent to him at the time of publishing.

The Swallows chairperson, however, told TimesLive that the players’ conduct was unacceptable.

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He has insisted that the club’s no-show was because players wanted to be paid their December salaries earlier, instead of the last day of the month as its stipulated in their contract. 

“It was never the club’s intention to find ourselves in this position. As a club, it is not as if we didn’t put diesel in the bus for players not to go to the stadium,” Mogashoa told TimesLive. “

“It is the players who said they were not going to a match until they were paid their December salaries. And this thing of saying we owe salaries is not true, it was the December salaries they wanted and we said they will get [it] at the end of the month.”

The players’ union said those salaries were still not paid on Tuesday, 23 January, and that instead of receiving their salaries on 30 December, the players were slapped with charges. 

Gaoshubelwe called on the PSL to act on Swallows’ conduct because allowing it would set a dangerous precedent, as a few clubs in both the premier division and first division have experienced financial challenges that led to challenges in paying players’ salaries. 

“What Swallows are doing, at this particular point, is criminal,” said Gaoshubelwe. “What will stop another club (from doing the same thing)?

“God forbid, there are a lot of clubs who have financial difficulties, Tomorrow they hold a DC, they concoct charges, trumped up charges, they find players guilty and they renegotiate the contracts that are non-existent.”