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Royal AM’s expulsion closes door on their highly controversial stint in the Premiership

Royal AM’s expulsion closes door on their highly controversial stint in the Premiership
Royal AM owner Shauwn Mkhize and her son, club chairman Andile Mpisane. (Photo: Instagram)
Yanga Sibembe
By Yanga Sibembe
11 Apr 2025
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The Premier Soccer League’s board of governors flushing Royal AM from the Premiership concludes one of the most controversial stays by a team in South Africa’s top flight.

On Thursday, 11 April 2025, the Premier Soccer League’s board of governors (made up of representatives of Premiership and Championship teams) ratified the recommendation of the executive committee to expel Royal AM from the South African top flight. 

The decision came after months of uncertainty around the club owned by KwaZulu-Natal businesswoman Shauwn Mkhize. Royal had last played a soccer match in December 2024 — a 3-1 defeat to TS Galaxy. 

Since that loss, the players of the club have sat at home, not knowing what the future holds. Royal’s fixtures were suspended by the PSL in January, after the team was taken over by the South African Revenue Service (SARS).

SARS takeover 


The tax collector targeted the club and a number of Mkhize’s other assets, with the hopes of recouping a tax debt of about R40-million that the KZN businesswoman owes them through a family trust. 

The PSL initially played ball and worked with SARS as the latter attempted to auction off the club to the highest bidder. A failed deal to sell the club, facilitated by SARS-appointed curator Jaco Venter, essentially forced the league’s hierarchy into making the landmark decision to expel Royal. 

Having been patient throughout the whole ordeal, despite the league’s reputation and integrity being dragged through the mud, the PSL was forced into a corner with time running out. It had to act decisively to protect the product, which is one of the best leagues in Africa. 

It also had to make the unprecedented decision in order to save face with its commercial partners, who have been frustrated by everything that has unfolded over the past few months. 



The expulsion of Royal means that all 11 matches played by the team will be nullified and the points earned by other sides in those fixtures will be expunged. No team will be directly relegated this season, but the team that finishes 15th on the log will participate in the relegation/promotion playoffs at the end of the season.

The SARS matter may have brought the Royal house of cards tumbling down, but it was just part of a string of events that have seen the KwaZulu-Natal club erode the league’s integrity regularly during its four-year stay in the Premiership.

Via the back door 


There were signs that Royal would be nothing but trouble four years ago when it boycotted the relegation/promotion playoffs. They had ended the 2020/21 season as runners-up in the second tier of South African soccer, trailing Championship winners Sekhukhune United by two points. They thus lost out on automatic promotion.    

At the time, they believed they had been treated unfairly by the PSL after missing out on promotion via a technicality. 

Royal AM owner Shauwn Mkhize and her son, club chairman Andile Mpisane. (Photo: Instagram)



Three of the points accumulated by Sekhukhune during that season came after they were handed maximum points by the PSL after their opponents in one of their games, Polokwane City, were punished for failing to field the prescribed number of under-23 players, as stipulated by the league’s rules. 

Despite subjecting the PSL to a protracted and futile court battle for this matter (which went as far as the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland) Mkhize was allowed to purchase the Premiership status of Bloemfontein Celtic. The Free State club was struggling financially and Mkhize saw an opportunity to make her dream of Premiership participation a reality. 

Foreshadowing 


While the league was still recovering from being dragged to the courts by the Thwihli Twahla hierarchy, Mkhize and her son Andile Mpisane once again drew negative attention to the Premiership in October 2021. 

The Royal officials handed out cash bonuses to players on the pitch, during a live broadcast, following a 2-1 league win over Maritzburg United. 

For this transgression they were hauled before the league’s disciplinary committee and fined R1.65-million (with R1.325-million suspended) for bringing the league into disrepute. This was just a month into their tenure as a Premiership side. 

This offence was yet more foreshadowing of what was to come from the team in subsequent seasons. They shook it off and managed to avoid further drama in their debut campaign in the top flight, finishing in an impressive third place to announce their arrival. 

Since then, Royal have been in and out of court as they try to fight an order by global soccer governing body Fifa to pay their former striker, Samir Nurković, R15-million after the club terminated the Serbian’s contract in 2022, without him making a single appearance. 

This was after they signed him as a free agent when he departed Kaizer Chiefs. Royal have also been punished by Fifa for refusing to pay former defender Ricardo Nascimento an amount of R600,000 in earnings. 

Transfer bans


They have continuously defied Fifa, which has led to them being slapped with transfer bans. In fact, due to the transfer restrictions imposed by the global soccer body, Royal were ousted from the Premiership’s reserve league – the DStv Diski Challenge – at the beginning of 2024/25 campaign. 

This as the club could not register enough players to field a team.

The SARS matter was the final nail in the coffin for Royal after a turbulent four years, a period that the PSL hierarchy would erase from the memories of the masses if they could. 

It did not have to be like this, though. On the surface, Mkhize was a black woman taking up space in a male-dominated industry. 

With Royal’s expulsion, Golden Arrows chairperson and the PSL’s acting CEO, Mato Madlala, is the only woman who owns a club in the Premiership. Prior to Madlala, other notable female PSL club owners included Ria Ledwaba (Ria Stars) and former Mamelodi Sundowns boss Natasha Tsichlas (who shared ownership with her husband Angelo and the Krok brothers).

Mkhize had the potential to add her own important chapter to this history. Instead, the flamboyant businesswoman has written the wrong kind of history during her time in the Premiership. DM

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