Head of Referees at the South African Football Association [SAFA], Mr. Abdul Ebrahim, says the football mother body is concerned with the safety of match officials in South Africa.
The referees department recently concluded their pre-season workshop, which is where the issue was discussed.
Ebrahim says the workshop was a success and they are now geared up for the 2024-25 Betway Premiership season.
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"Security for our match officials has always been a huge concern," Ebrahim tells KickOff.
"But thus far we've had no incidents at the national level where match officials will have their lives threatened, but yeah, still, it is something that we need to look into; a few months back, FIFA released quite a nice video from the refereeing committee where they spoke about respect for referees and the referee's abuse that is on the increase around the world.
"South Africa is a member of FIFA, so obviously, we need to look at the security of our referees as well. We don't want something to happen and then we act.
"About three weeks ago, we had all the HODs from the nine provinces in Johannesburg, and we discussed security for match officials in the ABC Motsepe League.
"It's difficult to put things in place when there are financial constraints, it is concerning that most of our fans are not knowledgeable about the laws of the game. They act on their interpretation.
"But on the national level, we are ready to take on the new football season.
"You may see one or two new faces; there's new equipment and kit for match officials; we are just waiting to receive that from the sponsor, Showmax because we know the sponsor has changed their logo.
"So they also have to change their colors; they were meant to deliver by the end of July. They haven't been delivered yet. So we hoping it arrives over the next week or two.
"So the colors of the match officials will change as well. I know black and navy blue are there, as well as coral and a pinkish color.
"There's a lot of concept and new thinking around the laws of the game, and that was the main focus of the workshop.
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"We've done a fairly successful fitness test, and there were one or two match officials that were not successful, but the bulk of about 96% of the match officials passed their fitness test. Other than that all the referees were 100% successful.
"There's a lot of new concepts coming from FIFA, new considerations when identifying challenges, offsides, handball, and penalty incidents.
"One of the biggest amendments is the handball; there's new thinking, new ideas. This is what the instructors have carried through the match officials."