Jordaan doesn’t seem to want a straight Safa erection

● The year was 2000. Location? Surulere Stadium, Nigeria. Occasion? Africa Cup of Nations semifinal, Nigeria versus South Africa. Conversation between a South African and a Nigerian.

Nigerian: Where are you from, brother? Me: South Africa.

Nigerian: “You must go tell Mandela not to tell us when to have an erection. Nigerians will decide when to have the erections. Just because South Africa has an erection doesn’t mean Nigeria must have an erection.”

The man was not talking about stiff third legs. South Africa had just had her second democratic election. Nelson Mandela had called on General Sani Abacha to afford the same to Nigerians.

Diplomatic relations between the Mandela administration and Nigeria, under its 10th head of state Abacha, had been strained to proportions far worse than the relationship between a snake and a mongoose. This story returned to me when my mind wandered on South African Football Association (Safa) erections, I mean elections. The posture by Safa has been Abacha-like.

When Ken Saro-Wiwa complained about Shell exploiting the oil riches of the people of Ogoni, Abacha murdered him. When Lucas Radebe, Mwelo Nonkonyana and Tokyo Sexwale were mentioned as challengers to the Safa presidency throne, incumbent Danny Jordaan didn’t kill them.

His henchmen, chief among them Mzwandile Maforvane, did his bidding, eliminating each potential challenger on the basis of ineligibility.

The elective congress, traditionally held in September, was brought forward to March.

Reason? Some flimsy, nonsensical excuse that it was because South Africa didn’t qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

You would have thought that an administration that scandalously presided over four failures by Bafana Bafana to qualify for the World Cup would be dripping with shame and resign en masse.

But Safa are so synonymous with scandal, you’d swear Safa House was an alias for Nkandla. The latest twist to this sorry Safa election saga is that the Independent Electoral Commission has withdrawn its initial agreement to oversee the election.

“The commission had initially acceded to the request to assist with these elections as requested in the correspondence signed by Mr Mumble on January 8 2018 subject to fulfilment of certain conditions which were communicated to Safa.