As Durban City FC’s promotion to the Betway Premiership seems nearly guaranteed, club chairman Farook Kadodia says he has no plans to rescue the Msunduzi Municipality’s leadership, which has mistreated him, by going back to Pietermaritzburg to take over the tarnished Royal AM.
Though City, formerly known as Maritzburg United, finished the regular season of the Motsepe Foundation Championship at the top of the log table, they had to pause their celebrations due to protests from other clubs in the division.
JDR Stars and Cape Town Spurs lodged cases with the Premier Soccer League’s dispute resolution chamber, alleging City fielded an improperly registered player, Saziso Magawana, for at least 27 matches.
However, the JDR case has since been dismissed with costs. Spurs’ case is set to be heard on Wednesday, but the chances of the Capetonians, who are trying to avoid relegation to amateur football, being successful are slim.
For the first time in about 20 years, the residents of Pietermaritzburg and other Midlands areas are likely to be starved of top-tier football as of next season.
This was after Royal’s PSL membership was terminated after the club’s ownership was taken over by Sars, who also failed to auction the club to recoup some of the tax owed by popular owner Shauwn “MaMkhize” Mkhize.
Kadodia, through Maritzburg United, had been responsible for bringing top-flight football to the Midlands for many years until the club’s relegation from the Premiership in July 2023.
After that, Msunduzi, which was one of Maritzburg’s financial backers, quickly jumped into bed with MaMkhize’s Royal and dumped the Team of Choice like a hot potato.
Msunduzi even refused Kadodia’s team the opportunity to share Harry Gwala Stadium with Thwihli Thwahla and forced them to play their home games in Durban.
Discarded like a dirty rag, Kadodia opted to relocate his club to Chatsworth and rebranded to Durban City ahead of the 2024/25 season.
Now the Harry Gwala Stadium, which has been a centre of happiness and source of income for small businesspeople, looks set to be a white elephant for the under-administration of Msunduzi Municipality as Kadodia vows he is not going back.
“We will not do that in line with whatever costs that we had to incur, and the decision and the planning of rebranding in Durban has got the wheels in motion,” Kadodia told Hollywoodbets Sports.
“We are not going to do that. Look, I know it’s disappointing for the fans, but I think the Msunduzi leadership needs to answer for that. I don’t think I should be involved in that.”
Despite Royal being there, some of the old Maritzburg United fans still showed their support for Durban City. They travelled to support the team when it was playing in Durban and also travelled to the last game of the season against Spurs in Cape Town.
Kadodia said the support for the club has also been growing at an impressive rate in Durban.
The chairman said he was confident they would achieve promotion, stating they failed to do so in the 2023/24 campaign due to the team being based in Pietermaritzburg but playing their home games in Durban.
“We assembled a team that was good enough to win the Championship,” Kadodia said.
“We scouted the technical team to come and do the job, and I think for this league, they did a remarkably well, and we achieved our target quickly.
“You must understand that we were relegated sometime in July 2023. We stayed in this league for two seasons.
“The first season was very difficult because we had no official base. We had to travel like a gypsy team to Sugar Ray Stadium in Pinetown.
“That’s why in the second season we had to make a very calculated decision to relocate and rebrand because we didn’t have a home stadium in Pietermaritzburg, of which we offered the Msunduzi leadership a second chance before we made that decision.
“They still refused us to share the stadium in Maritzburg. That’s the reason we rebranded to Durban City and relocated to Chatsworth Stadium.”
Written by Sithembiso Dindi