Jennifer Ferguson speaks out: a perspective on Danny Jordaan's descent from grace

South African Football Association president Danny Jordaan has been charged with fraud and theft amounting to R1.3-million. Photo: Sharon Seretlo/Gallo Images

By Janet Heard

25 Nov 2024

Former ANC MP Jennifer Ferguson says the Safa president and men such as Donald Trump, Jacob Zuma and Vladimir Putin are inflicting ‘deep wounds’ on society.

Jennifer Ferguson, Danny Jordaan’s rape accuser, was ready to kick off immediately with an interview after being contacted by Daily Maverick on WhatsApp in the wake of the powerful soccer boss being charged with fraud and theft.

“I don’t need to hire a PR company to create my responses, let’s just start,” she said from Sweden. Amid the revelations of PR spin emerging in court about Jordaan, the irony of the musician’s spontaneous response was evident.

Ferguson, who is a former ANC MP, described Jordaan as a man who had lost his way.

Ferguson was responding in the wake of the arrest of the 73-year-old South African Football Association (Safa) president, whom in 2017 she famously publicly accused of raping her in a Port Elizabeth hotel – almost a quarter of a century previously.

He was a comrade, but he entered the realm of contamination and power aplenty.

Last week, the longstanding Safa boss was arrested and charged with fraud and theft before receiving bail alongside Safa’s chief of finance, Gronie Hluyo, and journalist-turned-businessperson Trevor Neethling. Jordaan is accused of using R1.3-million of the association’s resources for his personal gain and protection, including hiring a security company and a PR company, Grit Communications, of which Neethling is the director.

Read more: Has Danny Jordaan finally reached the end of the road following his arrest?

Responding to the news from Sweden, where she lives, Ferguson said: “He was the leader that may have started off good, but he got lost. If you look at his origins and his profile, he was a comrade, but he entered the realm of contamination and power aplenty.”

Jordaan was a student activist who joined the United Democratic Front and the South African Council on Sport before becoming chair of the ANC in the Port Elizabeth North area after its unbanning in 1990.

Ferguson believes there is a “collective trauma around masculinity” where leaders abuse their position of power with impunity. And the world of sports leadership was at the epicentre of this masculinity.

She believes that Jordaan’s apparent descent is part of a wider leadership “sickness” that extends to the top from the likes of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to Jacob Zuma. And they are inflicting “deep wounds” on society.

“They have lost all sense of ethical compass and they cause mayhem and havoc in the spaces they occupy. We cannot call them responsible leaders and we cannot call them honest. They are betraying our young people with their contaminated leadership.”

Ferguson was standing in a community chapel at the spiritual centre where she works as a musical director when she heard the news of Jordaan’s arrest via a collective network of #MeToo movement friends with whom she remains connected. “I felt this aching stretch in my heart, almost a physical pain, and I just raised my hands and I just said, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ It was a deeply primal utterance. It was an acknowledgement that somehow there is some sense of divine justice, goodness is on our side, and that retreating does not mean defeat.”

Read more: State confident of securing convictions against Safa chief Danny Jordaan and co-accused

Ferguson has held doubts that Jordaan would ever face the music for any of the transgressions he has been accused of through the years “because … he will use every kind of strategy to avoid arrest, and not take responsibility”.

The State has revealed that one of these alleged mechanisms was a PR campaign to boost his image. Jordaan employed Grit Communications a month after Ferguson publicly accused him of rape.

Ferguson recalls being on the receiving end of this campaign, claiming it was a “counter-charge of conspiracy” to protect his image.

He’s a fighter, and he’s got wolves around him that once protected him, but now are going for the old wounded alpha male.

“It was a hostile, personally abusive campaign of complainant intimidation and character assassination and lies,” she said, saying that the campaign included fraudulent emails and fabricated documents to validate a “bullshit conspiracy” story.

Included in the PR campaign were accusations that controversial Premier Soccer League boss Irvin Khoza had colluded in a plot to bring down Jordaan.

Ferguson believes that the charges against Jordaan related to a “tiny misstep” that could lead to a giant fall.

She cautioned that it was early days yet for his trial, even though the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has expressed confidence that it has ticked all the boxes.

“He’s a fighter, and he’s got wolves around him that once protected him, but now are going for the old wounded alpha male.”

Safa is standing by Jordaan, saying his arrest was nothing but a well-orchestrated plot to unseat him as president.

Jordaan has consistently denied any wrongdoing in any of the abuses of power he has been accused of over the years.

In his fraud and theft case, he has insisted his innocence and plans to plead not guilty, arguing in an affidavit that he can “only presume that these charges were laid by disgruntled former employees of Safa”.

South African Football Association president Danny Jordaan has been charged with fraud and theft amounting to R1.3-million. (Photo: Sharon Seretlo / Gallo Images)

No regrets

Although Ferguson’s rape allegations reached a dead end, she did not regret her decision to break her silence to tell her story.

“Fear paralyses and makes mute, and by speaking out, you break the chain of fear, the hand grip on the throat,” she said.

After going public with rape accusations in 2017, she tried a reconciliatory invitation for restorative justice through mediation with Jordaan, but this was rejected. She then went to the Parkview Police Station to lay a charge of rape against him.

The odds were stacked against her. “The only way you can achieve justice is through evidence-based testimony and that was impossible.” In her case it would always be his word against hers about their memory of what happened in a hotel room decades ago, soon after the 1994 democratic elections in which she was nominated to serve as an ANC MP. Jordaan also served as an MP in Nelson Mandela’s first democratic government.

It took 18 months for the NPA to decide not to prosecute, an agonisingly slow process that at times had left her feeling frozen creatively, said Ferguson.

How much of my life energy has gone into this already?

Now, as the years have passed, she said she has been fortunate to have the distance of being in Sweden, where she is married to a Swede, Anders Nyberg. Their two sons, Ralph (33) and Gabriel (28), and Johanna (26), her daughter born with Down syndrome, live close by.

Ferguson will continue to keep an eye on the Palm Ridge Specialised Commercial Crime Court from Dalarna, Sweden, where she works as the musical director at Stiftsgården Rättvik, a centre that liaises closely with the Swedish church and the young community at large.

Sweden, her home since 2008, has been her sanctuary in some respects, though Ferguson makes regular trips to South Africa. “Sweden has become a kind of quiet retreat space, a place of serenity, which has led to a sort of split existence – I am a warrior in SA and in Sweden, a stoic.”

It is apparent that Ferguson, who launched her career on the alternative burlesque agitprop cabaret circuit in the turbulence of the 1980s protest era in apartheid South Africa, is deeply impacted by, but not obsessed with, Jordaan, who returns to court on 5 December to fight the charges against him.

“How much of my life energy has gone into this already?” she said.

The songwriter continues to explore her spirituality and creative endeavours. She had been looking at doing a master’s in comparative literature, but has just enrolled for a master’s in spirituality.

A South African musician friend, Wessel van Rensburg, has been visiting from Amsterdam and they have been recording music. “We are here next to this beautiful lake where I live, the silent lake that is 278 million years old. We created some beautiful tracks… and the music that came through was intuitive, really effortless.” DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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No regrets