While some think VAR would be easy to implement in South Africa’s professional football, experts on the technology have revealed there’s much groundwork that needs to be done, including the training and certification of referees to use the technology.
Though it may not take long to find sponsors that would make VAR affordable for the Premier Soccer League, without the South African Football Association (Safa) training enough referees to be Fifa accredited, VAR will remain a pipedream here.
Safa’s head of referees, Abdul Ebrahim, was not available to confirm the number of referees who are Fifa accredited to officiate using VAR, but Felix Tangawarima, Cosafa’s referees’ manager, who also acts as their VAR project manager, told the Sunday Times “there are only six Safa match officials certified by Fifa to use VAR”.
The six are Abongile Tom, Akhona Makalima, Zakhele Siwela, who obtained training from the Confederation of African Football (Caf) while Nonjabulo Ndlela, Luxolo Badi and Kgara Mokoena were trained by Cosafa.
Tom and Makalima worked as VAR officials during the Caf Super Cup match between Egyptian giants Al Ahly and Zamalek last month.
There appears to be a reluctance on the part of Safa and the PSL to follow in the footsteps of Morocco, the first African country to use VAR. Egypt has had a stop-start use of the technology while Caf has — with a great degree of success — used it at different stages of its flagship national and inter-club competitions.
Local football has been beset by controversial refereeing decisions, leading to an outcry for the introduction of the VAR technology.
At the unveiling of Betway as new sponsors for the Premiership, PSL chair Irvin Khoza said the ball was in Safa’s court regarding when VAR would be implemented. With less than five league matches played in the 2024-2025 campaign, there’s already been some incidents where decisions by referees left coaches and followers fuming and calling for VAR.
Stellenbosch coach Steve Barker decried Tom’s performance in their 3-1 loss to Orlando Pirates in the MTN8 final, calling it “indescribable” after Tom let Pirates take a set-piece metres ahead of where the foul occurred and resulted in a goal.
One round of PSL fixtures has eight matches; and Tangawarima said there were six VAR match officials needed for a single match. “When we do a VAR match (in Cosafa) we need six officials — four on the field, two in the van and two more operators. But the operators are different from referees, they’re technicians (usually provided by the VAR service providers),” he said.
With Safa having only six certified VAR officials, it would need to train a lot more to cover all the matches. They may need as many as 48 for each round of PSL fixtures.
Tangawarima, whose project to train VAR officials in the Cosafa region started last year and has so far certified 28 referees, said it should not take long to train referees “because Cosafa’s equipment to train referees resides in South Africa, and it only takes about 25 hours” of training for a referee to be certified.
Cosafa has partnered with Seb4Vision, a graphic services company, which also works with MultiChoice in providing graphics for PSL matches. On top of Cosafa’s training equipment, which costs R10.5m (a set), Seb4Vison also provides its own mobile equipment for VAR.
“It’s not difficult (to train referees) because as Cosafa we now have our training equipment. We are there to roll it out to our 14 member association. South Africa is fortunate in that one of the first certified VAR instructors in Africa is their own (former referee) Jerome Damon. If they’re talking about introducing VAR in SA, it’s a very positive move because this is where the game is going,” said Tangawarima, who is in Gqeberha where he is preparing referees to use VAR in the last nine matches of the Cosafa Women’s Championship, which starts on Tuesday.
Nqobile Ndlovu, director and founder of Cash N Sport Research, said South Africa would not be ready for VAR as long as there’s no one willing to cover the costs which he estimated to be about R80m per season.
He said these costs include about 16 cameras, which are also used to broadcast matches. According to the research Ndlovu has done on leagues in Spain, Brazil and England, where they use VAR, five VAR officials doing one match may cost between R200,000 and R300,000.
But Lucky Sebola, MD at Seb4Vision, said there was no need to install cameras permanently at the stadiums. “We use mobile booths for VAR and these can be operated at any venue. But as to how much VAR may cost, I can’t tell you.
“The whole thing (costs) depends on the duration of the tournament, meaning how many matches we have to cover using VAR. So far, we’re working very well with Cosafa, but again I can’t disclose how much they’re paying for our services because that’s a matter between us and them as our clients.”
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