The present day South African Football Association, unlike its predecessor allows for a mixed-race national team.

[2][4] In 1906 , the nation’s first international match took place against Argentina in Buenos Aires, where South Africa won 1–0.

The South African Football Association was the first national governing body on the continent and affiliated to FIFA in 1910.

[8] SAFA were expected to play in the newly formed Confederation of African Football's 1957 Africa Cup of Nations, however they did not.

The minutes of the meetings between SAFA and their counterparts from Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan were lost to fire and so the official reason for their non-appearance is unknown.

In his book African Soccerscapes, Professor Peter Alegi says this was to "create the perception of substantive change while maintaining the status quo".

There were calls from the Soviet bloc and Asia for the South African Soccer Federation (SASF) to become a member of FIFA in place of FASA.

The calls were rejected as FIFA's own statutes stated that "a National Association must be open to all who practice football in that country whether amateur, 'non-amateur', or professional and without any racial, religious, political discrimination".

Rous and United States citizen Joseph Maguire would later visit white South African officials for two weeks.

[6] At the Tokyo Congress, the Confederation of African Football members were lobbying for the expulsion of the FASA unless its "obnoxious apartheid policy [was] totally eliminated".

A delegation of the SAFA received a standing ovation at the congress of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in Dakar, Senegal a month later, where South Africa were accorded observer status.

South Africa's membership of the world governing body FIFA was confirmed at their congress in Zürich in June 1992.

In the short space of six years, SAFA has achieved remarkable success with qualification for the World Cup finals in France in 1998, the title of African champions at the 1996 African Nations Cup finals, which the country hosted, and the runners-up berth in Burkina Faso two years later.

Pirates were playing in the event for the first time and won the title away from home in the Ivory Coast to further amplify the magnificence of the victory.

There are now national age-group competitions from under-12 level up, qualified coaches working around the country and nine provincial affiliates, who are further divided into 52 regions.