News of the Nkandla report and bribes at the World Cup have destroyed our dreams as a nation, writes Tinyiko Maluleke.
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News of the Nkandla report and bribes at the Soccer World Cup have destroyed our dreams as a nation, writes Tinyiko Maluleke.
Johannesburg - The last week of May 2015 will go down in recorded history as the week in which we learnt two painful lessons, namely that the correct spellings for “Fifa” and “swimming pool” are “fahfee” and “fire pool”.
We cringed and we gasped as we were gently tortured with televised demonstrations of how the two are operated. The full meaning and implications of the lesson are still unfolding.
For the first time in years, the US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) probes threaten to unravel the fahfee culture of corruption inside Fifa. In the same week, Police Minister Nathi Nhleko made the most audacious attempt to sanitise Nkandla since November 2011, when the public protector first turned her attentions to it.
Today I am caught between the foul smell of the corruption currently being unearthed in Fifa and the unswimmable blue waters of the Nkandla fire pool, as Zweli Mkhize once described it.
The question eating me up right now is whether to jump or not to jump, and if so, which way – into the deftly imagined Nkandla fire pool or into the swirling pool of Fifa lies?
We are supposed to show some gratitude to both Nhleko and Fifa president Sepp Blatter. I know. The former for finally unpacking the security significance of a chicken run and the latter for giving South Africa the gift of a lifetime, never to be repeated in generations, namely the Fifa World Cup.
These are no small achievements. I mean, anyone who can cure South Africa of Nkandla, which is what poor Nhleko is desperately trying to do, deserves a medal.
Similarly, anyone who could bring the Fifa World Cup to Africa, nearly 100 years later, would under normal circumstances deserve the Nobel Prize. And yet no medal or prize is worth our national integrity and pride.
South Africans love football, but none more than yours truly. Not that I would kill for football. Though, in my younger football-playing days I came close to strangling a goalkeeper who kept on moving the goalposts, literally.
In my own right, I was a “famous” football player on the makeshift dusty grounds of Soweto, Meadowlands, Zone 8, where I grew up – especially in Letsogo Street, where I lived. In those days I was proudly known as Tinyiko “Teenage Dladla” Maluleke.
If you do not believe me, ask my best high-school friend, Meadow “Kaizer Motaung” Bayana.
I blame apartheid (who else?) for the fact that Meadow and I did not progress in football to the level of the likes of Petrus “Ten Ten” Nzimande, Marks “Go-man-go” Maponyane and James “Killer” Mkhwanazi, fellow residents of Ndofaya, as Meadowlands was fondly known in those days.
The Soweto of my youth was mad about football. Every Saturday at 3 o’clock we gathered around my father’s battery-operated transistor radio to listen to live football commentary.
With our eyes fixed on the rickety radio, our ears straining as it went in and out of tune, the legendary commentary of Thetha Masombuka and Koos Radebe would transport us, in the eye of the mind, to Orlando or George Goch Stadium and we would visualise the match blow by blow.
Masombuka and Radebe may now know it, but between the two of them and the Maskandi singer, Vusi Ximba, I had my best lessons in isiZulu.
Masombuka and Radebe skilled me with great isiZulu footballing terms, while Ximba taught me the swearwords I needed when “watching” football over the radio in
the midst of a hostile company of so-called friends supporting the
other team.
The other craze of the Soweto of my times was fahfee, or mo-china, apparently known as the numbers racket in Italy or simply as Italian lottery.
I did not know about gambling addiction then, but I think my uncle Khazamula was addicted.
He betted every day and he knew what all the fahfee numbers stood for like born-agains know their Bible verses. I suspect that the mother of my friend Jan was also one.
Every day she would narrate to us a dream from the night before, whose plot was connected to what a particular fahfee number stood for.
A few glorious times I had the chance to go to Orlando Stadium to watch Orlando Pirates play Kaizer Chiefs.
It was a whole-day affair, which started with the long walk from Meadowlands to Orlando, via Mzimhlophe, followed by the long ticket queues at the stadium.
It was also a dangerous trip, not only because of the tsotsis along the way but also because of the bloody fan fights that often followed a match between Chiefs and Pirates.
But I would not trade those experiences for anything in the world. They are the stuff of my boyhood.
Later, when I went to boarding school in Limpopo, I packed my football fanaticism into my bag and took it with me.
The little boy who is crazy about football still lives in me – he still screams and kicks every time Orlando Pirates score or miss.
You can imagine then what the 2010 World Cup meant for a soul like me. It was the culmination of boyhood dreams. This sport, that fired up my imagination and nurtured my fondest dreams as a barefooted youngster in the dusty footballing streets of Soweto, came home.
So at the time I listened with utter disdain and raw disinterest to all the arguments that suggested that the 2010 Fifa World Cup was only a vanity project.
I disregarded most if not all of the powerful arguments about the greed and corruption of Fifa. I sharpened my verbal arrows in defence of the vuvuzela, which I christened a symbol of Africa crying out to be heard and to be seen. I should have been more careful and more reticent in my enthusiasm.
But nothing was going to prevent me from being at the stadium on June 11, 2010 for the opening match between Bafana Bafana and Mexico. Later I travelled to Bloemfontein to watch and enjoy Bafana beating France.
The allegations that South Africa paid a bribe of $10 million in order to win the 2010 bid sends a chill down my football-crazy spine. Like millions of soccer-loving South Africans, I take it personally.
When it was suggested by some that the South African public was going to “pay” long and hard after the Fifa 2010 World Cup, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that we might have to “pay” in the way of a possible “national bribe”, allegedly paid on our behalf, now threatening to tarnish one of our greatest national moments.
In South Africa, the significance of the Fifa 2010 World Cup is almost at the same level as the 1994 elections that catapulted Nelson Mandela into the presidency. Until last week, few achievements decorated our young nation like the Fifa 2010 World Cup.
But you know what, if it was ill-gotten, we want no part of it. South Africans cannot fathom the possibility that the 2010 World Cup bid was not genuinely and fairly won. We do not deserve a national scam of this magnitude. Not at this time. Not ever. Our spirits are already dented by allegations that the warm-up matches were fixed.
The South African Football Association (Safa) has admitted to the payment of the $10 million with the crucial qualification being that, in their view, it was not a bribe, only a donation for the good of the game.
Safa had better be sure of its facts. The FBI is sounding very confident. The bribed are beginning to sing, from the Caribbean to the US, and Blatter seems to be running for cover.
The problem with bribes is that they are seldom, if ever, called bribes. If the word “bribe” was written into the deposit slip, then it would not be a bribe, would it? If the word “bribe” was shouted out every time a brown envelope changed hands below the table, it would not be a bribe.
There is a whole list of tactics that bribes assume for their survival. These include deliberate but plausible misnaming, delayed payment, disguised payment as well as good old payment in kind – payment in all kinds of kind. At the airport in Lagos, Nigeria, the officials ask if you have a gift for them.
On our roads, the traffic cops ask for a “cold drink” or “something to take home for the children”. Influential tender committee members obliquely ask for or receive without asking “sponsorships, thanksgiving (ditebogo) and donations”.
Banks speak of “commission” and corporates speak of an “administration fee”. No one ever uses the word bribe.
Where a culture of corruption and bribery has taken root, such as seems to have been the case within Fifa for years, it is not even necessary to ask for a bribe, either verbally or in written form. It is just understood and duly paid – no invoice, no receipt and no explanation needed. Blatter and company have always banked on the assumption that football fans, the sponsors and television networks, do not care about corruption allegations.
The fans just want to watch the beautiful games and the sponsors and TV networks just want to make money, they have argued. A line must now be drawn in the sand.
I find it curious how Safa has tended to take the back seat in this unseemly saga so far. I noticed how abruptly the organisation withdrew from its own press conference on Wednesday, leaving Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula on his own. Does Safa know something we don’t? I am holding my breath.
I sincerely hope that Safa and our government have not gambled, fahfee-style, with the hopes and dreams of our nation.
* Maluleke is a professor at the University of Pretoria and writes in his personal capacity.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Sunday Independent
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