Tokyo on why we fall short
Jonty Mark
okyo Sexwale believes South African football needs to go right back to basics if Bafana Bafana are to qualify again for a Fifa World Cup. Sexwale, who ran for the Fifa presidency in 2016, has been heavily involved over the years on various Fifa committees, and was on the board of South Africa’s World Cup 2010 organising committee, admitted it was very sad to see Stuart Baxter side fail to make it to Russia 2018.
“My heart sank,” said Sexwale last week in Houghton, where he was helping to launch the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s 2017 Mandela Remembrance Walk & Run.
“I think all South Africans dropped, you could feel their jaws dropping to the ground at the fact Bafana did not qualify. I am a part of organising the 2018 World Cup, we spent a month in Russia, and there is an empty space in your heart when you are organising a World Cup for all the other countries that have qualified. But we are South Africans, we are good people, we must get up and go back to the drawing board and find out why football is not running properly, why things have not gone well.”
When pressed on his views on why Bafana don’t seem to be able to qualify for the World Cup – they last made it through qualification for the 2002 finals (though they also played as hosts in 2010) – Sexwale added: “It is about re-planning, it is about looking at the quality of football. Sometimes you find more people on the playing fields than you do in the stadia.
“These are world-class (South African) stadia built for the World Cup, but there are more people on the benches and on the field than spectators, that tells you something is wrong. Pirates and Chiefs fi ll the stadia but others don’t.
“There are many things, administration, marketing, training, academies, discipline, coaches. We can’t change coaches willy-nilly. I heard on a talkshow people were asking why Shakes Mashaba left. We have to understand how to handle these things.”
If the Russian football team, meanwhile, probably have little to learn from Bafana in terms of how to play the game, the Russian authorities are using South Africa’s experience from the organisation of the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
“The Russians are looking towards us, they admire what we did here. We had a world-class World Cup. They are looking at other tournaments that were handled before, the problems in Brazil, Germany in 2006 and here. It is about airports, city transportation … the embassies across the world, if they don’t give visas on time people can’t make it. They are testing all these things, asking how it happened ( here), another major thing is security. On the football pitch Fifa takes charge, it is what Fifa has always done.”
The 2017 Mandela Remembrance Walk & Run, meanwhile, will take place on December 10, with the theme “Remembering Madiba: Deepening democracy and building an inclusive society.”
Nelson Mandela, who died in December 2013, would have turned 100 next year.
“Today we are gathered in this safe space to remember Madiba. In his name we always strive to remind people of his values and his own long walk to freedom. This walk – and now run – represents a commitment to Madiba’s beliefs and ideals. There comes a time, as a country, when we have to walk, and a time when we have to run,” added Sexwale, who of course spent many years with Mandela as a prisoner on Robben Island.
For more information on the Mandela Remembrance Walk and Run and how to enter, please visit their website, manedlawalkandrun.