The imminent demise of Ma-Mkhize’s Royal AM is very sad indeed.
I feel sorry for Ma-Mkhize and the club’s fans because they have shown all and sundry that they love football, and now they have been disposessed of something that was close to their hearts.
Soccer fans will no longer see the flamboyant Ma-Mkhize ululating and jiggling her body provocatively in jubilation each time her team scores.
They will no longer see her running onto the pitch to hug her players and hand them hard cash wrapped in brown envelopes after beating the likes of Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pitates.
All this because Ma-Mkhize has had all her assets, including the soccer team Royal AM confiscated by the South African Revenue Service (SARS), because she owes the tax-collecting institution R40 million which she has failed to repay.
Now SARS has put the club on sale and it will soon be auctioned, starting with the amount of R15 million.
Ma-Mkhize’s attempts to indicate that the club is not hers, that it actually belongs to her son fell on deaf ears as the High Court in Durban ruled that SARS has the right to go ahead and sell the club off in order to recoup what Ma-Mkhize owes it.
But it will take someone who is really brave, flushed with cash and willing to take risks to purchase the team.
This as the team is presently in disarray with players not training and the team’s administrators being on a hiatus because they have not been paid their salaries since last year when SARS confiscated the club.
Chances of the team getting relegated are very high as many teams have played around 17 to 18 League games while Royal AM has only played 11 games and still has to play the last 32 match of the Nedbank Cup knockout trophy.
It takes months for players to be match fit and since they have been idle for the longest time now, it will be too late before they are match fit and shall have received a serious drubbing from their opponents in the Betway League before they can compete to the best of their abilities.
But for the sake of football and “normality” in the PSL, let the brave millionaire or billionaire buy the team now so that the players can start earning something and also that the PSL fixtures can be completed, albeit later than initially planned.
This state of affairs reminds me of the year 1988/1989 when Sundowns was confiscated by Standard Bank, this after its equally flamboyant owner Zola Mahobe was found to have defrauded the bank of millions of rand together with her lover Snowy Moshoeshoe.
During Mahobe’s days at Sundowns the team’s players and officials lived lavishly as they were spoiled with incentives, hard cash and overseas trips together with their wives/ girlfriends.
After news broke that Mahobe had defrauded the bank and that the bank would temporarily take curatorship of the team to recoup the millions that Nahibe owed it, Sundowns was sarcastically nicknamed “the Standard Bank Boys” by its detractors.
Mercifully, the bank carried on with Sundowns for a while and paid salaries of the players, officials and coaching staff.
Sundowns players at the time comprised agile goalkeeper Lesilo Anderson and infield players like Go Mabusela, Panyaza Chitja, Wire Chirwali, Lovemore Chagunya, Mike Ntombela and Zane Moosa.
The late Screamer Tshabalala was the team’s coach.
As a parting shot, let’s hope that the fear of relegation will be a motivation in itself to the Royal AM players to win most of their remaining games, which they will play in quick succession to catch up with the number of matches that have been played by their opponents in the PSL.