Zim-SA Match Investigated For Match Fixing

A friendly match between Zimbabwe and South Africa in 2010 was investigated for matchfixing.

The pre-World Cup friendly was so hastily arranged that some South African Football Association(SAFA) officials didn’t know it was being put together. The Warriors lost 3-0 to Bafana Bafana at the Moses Mabhida Stadium.

Said former FIFA investigator Terry Steans in his asserting that match-fixing syndicates had infiltrated SAFA well before the World Cup of 2010:

Wilson Perumal [a convicted Singaporean match-fixer] had contacts with Henrietta Rushwaya of the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) way before that. He was in Zimbabwe as early as 2007.

He was active in the region from then and would have had relationships with his South African contacts.

Bafana’s friendly against Zimbabwe was primarily to raise money for the then cash-strapped national association. It however had the secondary function of providing Perumal and the Singaporean ring with a match that could be manipulated for the illegal betting markets of Thailand, Malaysia, and China.

However because of the parameters for the investigations was because FIFA security was constrained by investigating matches referred to in contracts by Perumal’s organisation, Football4U, and SAFA itself.

These contracts deal with matches played after the end of April 2010, while the Zimbabwe game was played on January 27.