Dr. Kaizer Motaung was flooded with emotions after Wednesday afternoon’s National Soccer League elections.
The Kaizer Chiefs Chairman, a founding member of the NSL was re-elected on the executive committee on a day where Dr. Irvin Khoza retained his place as Chairman for another term.
But before the voting took place for the exco committee, Khoza honoured Motaung for his influence in football a couple weeks after his 80th birthday celebrations, which also left his daughter Jessica Motaung in tears.
Motaung received an award and a R2-million cheque which served as a token of appreciation for his influence in his role of developing South African football.
“It was emotional because this has been a very interesting journey, a long journey, and of course Dr Khoza, both of us have been on this journey, trying to manoeuvre of go forward and seeing how best we can move football forward in this country,” he said.
“So it was really emotional, the music made it even worse as I became very nostalgic about some of the things we went through in this journey.”
Motaung went on to reminisce about the path that now extends over two decades alongside Khoza in chapters of history that will forever be engraved in South African history, a story that transcends beyond football.
“Obviously, we have come a very long way. When we put this league together, we manoeuvred as a team, and even when he was not the Chairman of Pirates, he was with us fighting SAFA at the time; they wanted to run both amateur and professional football,” he added.
“So the journey with the Chairman has been very exciting and very eye-opening because we went through quite a lot and it needs time for us to put something together, but obviously we can write our own history ourselves and not wait for someone to come and write it for us, in terms of where we come from, this has been our life through and through.”
