Although the implementation of the VAR system in Safa may occur either as a pilot project or in the long term, the organization is not inactive. It has been confirmed that Safa is consulting with leading regional specialists from Cosafa to prepare its judges for working with this system.
On Friday, Safa began a two-day introductory seminar jointly with Fifa for the newly elected National Executive Committee (NEC) and senior management in Sandton. A number of issues are expected to be discussed at the seminar.
Among the topics discussed was obtaining permission from Fifa to interact with the Cosafa officiating department, headed by Felix Tangavarima, to train Safa judges using VAR systems.
Tangavarima, who is already responsible for training eight out of ninety Safa officials in this system, agreed to participate. However, Safa's head, Lydia Moniapao, admitted that they could have approached Tangavarima earlier.
Moniapao noted: 'Yes, you are right—if we had consulted him earlier, perhaps if we had done it in early 2024 or 2025, our 90 judges would already be trained.' She added: 'We thought about it and asked: 'What does Cosafa do, what can we learn, and what can we implement in our football ecosystem?' We contacted them and asked them to conduct this process for us.'
It was previously stated that Safa has a three-year plan with a budget of 50 million Rand, and judge training was scheduled for the second year, as the 20 million Rand funding from the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture (DSAC) was intended for the first year, specifically for purchasing VAR systems.
Nevertheless, Safa decided not to wait, taking on judge training in the interim period. Initially, they conducted internal courses before seeking additional expertise from Tangavarima and his team.
Moniapao explained: 'As an administration, we were tasked with finding out what Cosafa does that can help us accelerate the training of our judges. That is when we decided to send Mr. Chad Su (Safa's IT manager) to the CAF Women's Champions League qualifying matches in Gaborone, as well as to the U-20 Men's Championship in Mozambique.'
'This was done so that he could spend time there and establish contact with the Cosafa VAR team under Mr. Felix's leadership, assess what they do, identify gaps in our work, and move this forward.'