The 2016 Afcon women tournament will kick off on Saturday in Yaounde, Cameroon with Banyana drawn in Group A against hosts Cameroon, Egypt and neighbours Zimbabwe.
Yet former skipper Dlamini, who yesterday launched a new soccer school in Durban with former national team coach Clive Barker, will not be joining the team as the dates clashed with her commitments as a pundit for SuperSport International as well as other women's causes.
“I’m still part of Banyana Banyana - I’m just not part of the team that is going to Cameroon as the coach [Derisee Ellis] and I couldn’t agree on our schedules,’’ Dlamini said.
“I have my own schedules where there's SuperSport, there’s [other] programmes that I’m involved in. I sent it to the manager and the team so they knew in advance, and if there’s camp and it clashes, I normally reshuffle that to accommodate the camp. This was communicated with them this time, and I was left with no option but to choose whether to travel with the team or attend to the commitment I had.
“I couldn’t get the support from the technical staff to go out on the single day of camp and go and do my presentation and come back and re-join them, but was given an ultimatum of choosing whether I travel with the team or have my name removed from the squad. So I just said to myself it’s about growth and I’m going to speak about the topic that is very prone to women.
“My topic was, at the Essence Festival, ‘same game, different things’ and it speaks very loudly about the challenges that women face, so I would have expected Safa to support me. But I understand the coach was forced to make decisions at that point in time.”
Dlamini insists there’s no hard feelings towards the coaching staff, and insists she will fight to work her way back into the team in future.
“There no hard feelings,” she said. “We agreed that when she [Ellis] addressed the press conference and announced the names, she’d say that I withdrew and she didn’t drop me … she didn’t drop me at all, so I chose that decision on my own.
“Of course I will available in future - I’m going to the play-offs now in December so that too I think is commitment enough to show that I’m still in the game.
“I have to obviously work hard to get my position back. There’s so much talent in the national team, and if there are qualifiers or friendly games, I definitely want to be in the national team.”
Banyana will open their Afcon group against Zimbabwe on Saturday at Stade de Yaounde, followed by a clash against hosts Cameroon on November 22 at the same venue. They will finish the group against Egypt on the 25 November at the Stade de Limbe.