As SA Revenue Service officials and a multitude of “heavily armed” (according to reporters) police raided the mansion of Royal AM team owner Shauwn Mkhize in La Lucia, her ex-husband Sbu Mpisane looked on from a balcony, drink in hand and with seemingly not a care in the world.
Mpisane stays in the right wing of the mansion and has barely spoken to Mkhize after she filed for divorce in 2018. Mkhize wanted a quickie split and to keep all her assets. Mpisane wanted half of everything.
“When the love was still in the air, Mpisane and Mkhize got married in a joint estate agreement in 1991, and they later inherited Zikhulise Group Holding from Mkhize’s ANC veteran and anti-apartheid activist mother Florence Mkhize,” wrote the Daily News.
Their divorce finally went through on November 18 in the Durban high court. It is unknown how much Mpisane got, but as recently as June, City Press reported he had filed a discovery affidavit claiming Mkhize was transferring and disposing of assets “behind his back” as the divorce rumbled on: “According to the sources, Mpisane was short-changed after assets of the trust were transferred to another one called the Shandi Trust, which is linked to MaMkhize and her football club Royal AM.”
Royal AM seems to be a club where money goes to disappear. Now you see it, now you don’t, especially if you are a player. Royal AM are still under a Fifa transfer ban for not paying Samir Nurković the R15m they owe him in wages. Earlier this week, Nurković’s attorney, Davor Lazic, said Royal AM had still not made a payment despite being ordered to do so by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Lazic told the SABC that Royal AM have until next week to pay up or they would drag them back to Fifa, an action that could see “a points deduction, relegation to the lower division — or worst-case scenario — both”.
“They have not made any payments to date and we remain firm in our position: only full payment with interest will be accepted. If they fail to comply by the middle of next week, we will escalate the matter to Fifa ensuring that this time it involves not only Royal AM, but also Safa and the PSL,” Lazic said to SABC Sport.
The PSL (Premier Soccer League) won’t like that much. Nor will they like that Royal AM is in serious danger of collapse. As PSL chairperson Irvin Khoza said not so very long ago: “It will be bad for business.”
The PSL should be used to bad business. They have an Oliver Twist history of team owners for whom the practise of running a football club has been to stand in front of Khoza, gruel bowl in hand, asking: “Please sir, can I have some more?”
Sars has been asking Mkhize for more for a long time. In 2016, the vehicle and forfeiture unit “seized luxury items, including expensive vehicles, at her La Lucia home”, according to City Press. In 2020, “Sars successfully obtained a liquidation order against Zikhulise Cleaning Maintenance and Transport, a company owned by MaMkhize, which owed about R204m in unpaid taxes”.
How, in what world, is she a fit and proper owner of a football team? Royal AM is a smokescreen of a club, a product of the flawed franchise-esque system of the PSL, where a place in SA’s top league can be bought with little due diligence performed.
“In 2014 the Mpisane family bought Mpumalanga-based soccer club Sivutsa Stars FC, which was relocated to Pietermaritzburg and renamed Royal Eagles FC,” reads the Royal AM site.
“In 2019, [they] bought Real Kings FC … [they] purchased Real Kings FC and renamed it Royal AM FC. In August 2021, Royal AM went on to buy Bloemfontein Celtics [sic] which previously played in the Premier Soccer League (PSL) for more than 50 years. Bloemfontein Celtics (sic) was then renamed Royal AM FC which allowed the club the opportunity to play in the PSL [2021/22] for the first time since it was formed.”
Royal Ranch, the Royal AM clubhouse in Pietermaritzburg, was also raided by Sars this week. Documents were taken and luxury cars loaded on trucks. The empire is crumbling, the façade is slipping and, while Rome was burning, Sbu Mpisane was sipping.
He has seen this all before. It’s just another day in the MaMkhize Mystery. The Royal AM motto is “United we stand, divided we fall”.
Mpisane’s divorce may have come at just the right time.
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