South Africa will attempt to qualify for the African Nations Championship (CHAN) that is to be staged in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in August this year.

The country had initially opted out of the competition, but are now confirmed as one of seven sides who will enter a second set of qualifiers for the final two spots remaining in the 19-team fields.

The competition is only open to locally-based players who ply their trade in their domestic league, which to be fair is the majority of the current Bafana Bafana squad.

The finals were initially due to be hosted next month, but have been moved to August due to a lack of readiness by organisers.

It is unclear how the qualifiers will unfold, but South Africa are joined by Algeria, Comoros, Gambia, Malawi, Egypt and Gabon in attempting to earn one of the two remaining places.

If SAFA and the PSL clubs take the competition seriously, Bafana would have a good shout at winning the whole thing, but one of the reasons why they did not enter this time is they have often been forced to field D-team sides as clubs would not release players for qualifiers.

Should they advance to the finals they will be in a five-team Group C alongside Uganda, Niger, Guinea and the other Qualifier team.

South Africa were CHAN hosts in 2014 but despite fielding a strong squad were ousted in the pool stages after a win over Mozambique, draw with Mali and loss to Nigeria.