Mbalula denials ring ever more hollow

FIKILE Mbalula’s unequivocal assertion during a news conference last week that “we didn’t pay a bribe for the World Cup” is looking increasingly foolish. No sooner had the sports minister made this brave, and apparently premature claim, than a letter surfaced signed by former South African Football Association boss Molefi Oliphant in which he authorised Fifa general secretary Jérôme Valcke to pay $10-million to the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football, the organisation controlled by one of the most notorious people in world football, Jack Warner.

This raised all kinds of awkward questions, not least because the US had specifically dubbed this payment a bribe, given to secure Warner’s vote for South Africa to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

There is no good reason why South Africa should divert money from Fifa to a region miles away, and put this cash under the control of man who had waded through numerous scandals.

This week, the howl for answers increased in volume when Fifa president Sepp Blatter resigned on Tuesday, only about 100 hours after being elected for a new four-year term.

Unchastened by his experience the previous week, Mbalula held another media conference. He reiterated his claims that there was no bribe, just a $10-million payment which was all “above board” and “does not equate to bribery”.

Given Mbalula’s luck, it was almost inevitable that the transcript emerged the next day of a hearing in which former Fifa executive Chuck Blazer spilt the beans on that particular payment.

“I, and others on the Fifa executive committee, agreed to accept bribes in conjunction with the selection of South Africa as the host nation for the 2010 World Cup,” said Blazer, under oath.

Mbalula could hardly hold another news conference, so he took to Twitter, hitting back at Blazer by saying that because “some compromised criminal in the US said something, we must then believe this criminal?” “This should be the funniest bribe ever,” he said. But no one was laughing. This newspaper has traced the paper trail back to former president Thabo Mbeki, who authorised the $10-million. Many others are implicated along the way, including Danny Jordaan and Oliphant.

Of course, where Mbalula is right is that everything hangs on how this payment is described: in his view, this was a legitimate payment to benefit football; in the view of the FBI and Blazer, it was a bribe.

This terminology has tripped up people for years; bribes are disguised as “facilitation payments” or “consultancy payments”— fancy words meant to provide respectability to something a lot less honourable.

Certainly, it is difficult to prove that any payment was actually intended as a quid pro quo for something else entirely. One of the wisest things Mbalula said all week was that “bribery is like a ghost — you’re never gonna see it”.

But that only works if no one says a word: when the people who took the bribes start rolling over on why they were paid, the dominos start to fall.