Sports Minister To Get Involved In Gallants’ ‘Hostage’ Drama

New Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, Zizi Kodwa says he is in talks with international relations minister Naledi Pandor and other stake holders to see the release of two Marumo Gallants members – media manager Rufus Matsena and physio Tebogo Dhlomo.

Gallants confirmed on Monday that Dhlomo and Matsena are still being “retained” in Benghazi, Libya two weeks after club faced Al-Akhdar at Benghazi’s Martyrs of February Stadium on match day five of the group stage in the CAF Confederation Cup.

Chairman Abram Sello was duped with an inflated amount of R35,000 a ticket “while Gallants’ investigation showed the tickets were worth R6,000 each,” according to reports.  

The situation has now alerted politicians to become involved to resolve the conflict.

“One of the discussions I’m going to have now with the Deputy Minister [Nocawe Mafu], we are looking for minister Naledi Pando, but apparently I’m unable to get hold of her,” said Kodwa, who was for the CAF African School Football Championship in Durban, to iDiski Times on Tuesday.

“I want an update on that issue, because as of now before we went to this draw, we did not get the sufficient information or an update.

“But I’m aware that the government, through diplomatic channels, is dealing with that issue.”

It was an expensive trip for Gallants, as they touched base firstly in Turkey before connecting to Libya.

They played the game without their official kits by MonFlair, buying an Adidas kit to honour the game that had to be postponed by a few hours because Gallants arrived late, as reported by iDiski Times.   

Despite all these challenges and a subsequent 4-1 defeat, Gallants have fought hard in the competition to reach the quarter-final stages after finishing top of their group.

They showed a remarkable brilliant display to come from two goals down to beat Congolese side Saint Eloi Lupopo at Dobsonville Stadium on Sunday.

The club is understood not to be playing the CAFCC matches in Limpopo because it would be too pricey for them, because they would have to pay more money for accommodation to the visiting teams, preferring to play matches in Gauteng.

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They will know who they will be drawn against in the quarter-final when the draw will be done on Wednesday in Cairo.

Kodwa said this is why it is important to form relationships such as signing a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU).   

“It is important that diplomatic relationships must exist from country to country,” he said.

“It smoothes the travel and such as issues from federation to federation, which is why we are talking about school sports.

“We include federations, we include CAF and we include our local federations and these issues must be ironed out first so that, when we talk about issues of travelling we are expecting these problems to arise. Of course countries have different laws.

“Our own Bafana Bafana always complain about the treatment in other countries. You can’t do much about it because, those are domestic laws in other countries.”