South African tycoon Sandile Zungu confirms bid to unseat Danny Jordaan as SAFA president

South African businessman Sandile Zungu, the owner of AmaZulu Football Club, has confirmed he will run for the presidency of the South African Football Association, setting up a challenge to Danny Jordaan's 13-year hold on the job.

Zungu said football regions had approached him over a long period before he agreed to stand. Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, he said he had consulted people who understood the terrain to work out whether the challenge was worth pursuing before raising his hand.

The election is set for Sept. 12, with nominations closing on July 29. Jordaan has led SAFA since 2013 and is understood to be seeking a fourth term, though he has not formally confirmed his candidacy. A grouping aligned to him, the Football Transformation Forum, has publicly backed him.

Zungu is pitching himself as the businessman who can run football like an industry. He said his motivation is to close the gap between commerce and the sport, arguing that soccer is a business that South Africa has failed to treat as one. If elected, he said, he wants Bafana Bafana to sit comfortably among the top three national teams on the continent, backed by better infrastructure and clearer pathways for young players to move abroad.

His campaign has picked up momentum in recent days. Bennett Bailey, a SAFA vice-president who had earlier planned to run himself, withdrew at the weekend and threw his support behind Zungu, calling him the calibre of leader South African football needs and citing his business record. Former presidential hopeful Ria Ledwaba has also endorsed him. The campaign is expected to launch formally on July 18 under the banner SZ2026.

Whether Zungu can even appear on the ballot is not yet settled. SAFA legal committee chairman Poobie Govindasamy said in May that Zungu would not be eligible while he retains his ties to AmaZulu, drawing a comparison to Patrice Motsepe, who had to step down as owner of Mamelodi Sundowns before becoming president of the Confederation of African Football. Bailey has argued the opposite, saying Zungu qualifies because he sits on a SAFA structure, the remuneration committee. SAFA will run integrity and eligibility checks after nominations close.

Jordaan heads into the vote under a cloud. He is facing a court case over alleged financial maladministration at SAFA House, and in May four of his opponents were expelled from the SAFA executive after publicly questioning his leadership, a move his critics read as a purge and his backers as housekeeping. He is nonetheless understood to have consolidated support across most of the association's regions.

The voting math is daunting for any challenger. A total of 52 regions, eight associate members and the Premier Soccer League cast ballots at the congress, with each region's vote counting four times, which places a premium on regional organisation rather than public profile.

Zungu built the fortune behind his football ambitions in industry and investment. Born in Umlazi township, Durban, in 1967, he trained as a mechanical engineer at the University of Cape Town, took an MBA at its Graduate School of Business and completed an executive programme at Harvard Business School. He worked at Engen, South African Breweries and Richards Bay Minerals before founding Zungu Investments Company, known as Zico, in the early 2000s.

The firm spans mining, energy, manufacturing, property, education and gaming, with stakes in companies including Sereti Resources, Rockwell Diamonds and Coza Mining. Zungu has chaired EOH Holdings and served as a non-executive director of Grindrod and Novus Holdings. In 2025 he emerged as a central figure in Sizekhaya Holdings, the consortium awarded South Africa's national lottery and sports pools licence, a concession valued at 180 billion rand over eight years, a deal that drew scrutiny over political connections that the operator and a parliamentary committee said followed a transparent process.

His profile reaches beyond business. Zungu is president of the Black Business Council, a member of the BRICS Business Council and the Presidential Black Economic Empowerment Advisory Council, and serves as chancellor of Mangosuthu University of Technology. He briefly ran for ANC provincial chairman in KwaZulu-Natal in 2022 before withdrawing.

He bought AmaZulu, the oldest club in the top flight, in October 2020. Under his ownership the team finished second in the 2020-21 season and qualified for the CAF Champions League, and his daughter, Sinenjabulo Zungu, serves as its chief executive. Credible estimates put his personal net worth at about $13 million (226 million rand), which makes him one of the wealthier club owners in the league rather than a billionaire.

The contest now moves to the regions, where it will be won or lost. Zungu is betting that discontent with the status quo and his business credentials can overturn an incumbent who has survived every previous challenge. Jordaan is betting they cannot. The nominations close first, and only then will it be clear whether the fight actually happens.