Draw for SA's 2013 Afcon announced

With South Africa automatically qualifying as hosts, 46 other countries will participate in qualifiers for the final tournament.   The 16 teams that qualified to CAN Orange 2012, to be staged in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, will get an automatic bye from the first two rounds and enter directly in the final round of qualifiers that begins after Afcon 2012, meaning that 30 countries will take part of the qualifiers from the start.   The lowest ranked four teams (Swaziland, Sao Tome, Seychelles, and Lesotho) will meet in first and second leg preliminary round to qualify two teams.   The two winners of the first prelim, along with 26 other nations will meet in two-leg qualifiers to bring the number of contestants down to 14.   After Afcon 2012, the 16 teams that qualified along with the 14 teams that qualified from Preliminary round 2 will meet in first and second leg formula to qualify 15 countries. They will then be joined by South Africa as host country.    The Final Round will be played in September and October 2012.   The draw is: Preliminary Round 1: Seychelles v Swaziland (Win 1/2) Sao Tome v Lesotho (Win 3/4) Preliminary Round 2 Ethiopia v Benin Rwanda v Nigeria Congo v Uganda Burundi v Zimbabwe Algeria v Gambia Kenya v Togo Win 3/ 4 v Sierra Leone Guinea Bissau v Cameroon Chad v Malawi Win 1/2 v RD Congo Tanzania v Mozambique Central Africa v Egypt Madagascar v Cape Verde Liberia v Namibia   The matches will be played in the first half of 2012 and with the exact dates to be communicated later.