How SA stole the World Cup
Was it all worth it? Six years after SA hosted the 2010 soccer World Cup, this remains a difficult question to answer.
It was, on the face of it, a no-brainer. SA got to be the centre of global attention, putting on a major event that ran efficiently, one that was characterised by wonderful hospitality and that enhanced our reputation as a tourist destination.
It was also an exercise in nation-building, as South Africans pulled together to “prove the Afro-pessimists wrong” by staging a world-class event.
But in order for all of this to occur, a number of heady sacrifices had to be made, some financial, some ethical and some just plain illegal.
In my book, The Big Fix — How South Africa Stole the World Cup, I attempt, in some detail, to go into the problems that surrounded the staging of the event.
What struck me was how the national impulse to project success and to prove that we could do it resulted in a number of serious issues being buried in a deluge of patriotic fervour.
The first casualty of this was proper interrogative reporting.
So it came to be that the local media — and I include myself in this, as I was editing the Sunday Times at the time — failed to ask itself the most obvious question: was there back-door dealing to secure the hosting of the tournament?
Until 2015, most would have believed the line that it was a combination of “Mandela magic” and SA’s superb bid presentation that won the Fifa executives over to our bid.
What a shock it was, then, to discover that there were strong claims of corruption. American football don Chuck Blazer revealed in plea bargain testimony that his vote and those of two others were obtained in exchange for a payment of US$10m to one Jack Warner, a man with a greasy reputation who ran the Central and North American football body. In Blazer’s sealed testimony before a judge in New York’s eastern district, a picture of a shameless money-for-votes scheme emerged. According to his testimony, the money, paid under the guise of support for the “African diaspora”, made its way to Warner and then to his bank accounts in three tranches.
The money, initially to have been paid by the SA government, became the problem of the SA Football Association (Safa).
In two letters to Fifa, a cunning scheme was outlined. Instead of government paying the money, it was to be deducted from Fifa’s payment to SA and Fifa would pay Warner. To ensure that everybody clearly understood this, a letter was written by Safa’s Molefi Oliphant to Fifa instructing — twice in the space of four paragraphs — that the money be paid into accounts controlled by Warner.
No record of this payment — or indeed of the “diaspora legacy programme” — was ever made in the extensive government history of the 2010 tournament, issued after the event had been completed. Nor was it mentioned in the official online entry on the cup’s legacy programmes. No-one has been investigated or charged under SA law over the bribe.
But this, it turns out, was but one of several shameful episodes surrounding the World Cup.
It has since emerged that the warm-up games played by Bafana Bafana ahead of the tournament were fixed by an Asian betting syndicate.
They accomplished this by literally walking into the Safa offices and offering their service — referees to be flown in and accommodated free of charge for all games — to Safa executives.
The man behind the scam, one Wilson Raj Perumal, wrote in his self-published book, Kelong Kings, how he had easily persuaded the South Africans to come on board. Only one Safa official, then referee boss Steve Goddard, reported turning down a $3,000 offer to seal the deal.
Either no other official was offered money, or no other official has come clean about it. Take your pick.
Rather than fix the outcome of the games in favour of one or another team, the syndicate arranged the betting around the total number of goals scored.
The most enthusiastic implementer of the scam, a referee called Ibrahim Chaibou, blew for penalties that were not even remotely related to the play on the field. In one instance he went so far as to insist that a missed penalty be retaken.
Of course, it did no harm that Bafana Bafana happened to emerge victorious in all these warm-up games. To the fans it seemed like a mercurial run by a team amped up on playing this major tournament at home.
What was truly astonishing was that Safa officials knew about this scam but chose to sweep it under the carpet because they did not wish to disrupt the wonderful positive atmosphere the fixed games had helped create.
Three Safa officials have been banned from football for a few years because of the scandal, but no criminal charges have been brought. Apparently SA prosecutors don’t regard match-fixing as a crime.
Off the field, the scandals were equally outrageous. The allocation of stadium contracts to businesses was rigged by the construction firms.
THERE HAVE BEEN NO CRIMINAL CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST ANYONE FOR THIS BLATANT ABUSE OF THE PUBLIC TRUST
They held two meetings — picture Mafia dons in a pizza parlour — where they sliced and diced up the contracts.
They shared out the stadium builds and, to make sure the right people won the right tenders, they colluded on “cover pricing” — deciding who would submit losing bids that were too expensive or contained elements known not to be favoured by government.
To cap it all, they agreed on a nice 15% margin on all projects. Confronted by the competition authorities with their deeds, they agreed to a R1.5bn fine to be spread among all the companies. Such was their hubris that, at hearings into the affair, they argued that the fines were too heavy, and many continued to employ the same officials who had cut the dodgy deals.
Again, there have been no criminal charges brought against anyone for this blatant abuse of the public trust.
But perhaps the worst incident occurred in Mpumalanga, where a very courageous man, the speaker of the Mbombela municipality, Jimmy Mohlala, was gunned down outside his house by assassins.
His crime had been to raise serious questions about the purchase of the land on which the Mbombela Stadium was built and to question the awarding of a contract related to the stadium build.
His killing came after many months of confrontation between municipal officials and party bosses. At the nub of the controversy was the purchase of the land on which the stadium was built for the sum of exactly R1. This was land awarded to the community as restitution for apartheid wrongs. It was placed in the hands of a trust, which then sold some of the land on for the stadium build.
A high court judge threw out the transaction, which must rank as the single biggest land swindle of the modern era.
For this, Mohlala’s blood was spilled on the streets.
Again, it is astonishing that this investigation has gone cold and no-one has been jailed for the crime, despite some “arrests” and “releases” of suspects.
You might argue that it was all worth it for the financial windfall that resulted. But SA’s economic performance has slumped since the World Cup. Granted, global conditions have not been favourable, but the hosting of the World Cup did not provide the economy with an advantage over its competitors when it came to dealing with the headwinds.
The much-celebrated “social cohesion” generated by the World Cup is pretty much in tatters now, as social media exposes the true feelings of the races that were supposedly united by the tournament.
The national team’s performance has been dismal and the team has slid down the rankings. It is unlikely to qualify for any serious international tournament.
Perhaps there have been some gains for football. Perhaps they will emerge only when the next generation takes centrestage. Our junior and women’s teams have qualified for the Olympics in Brazil.
What is certain is that we have learnt a bitter lesson: the hubris of patriotism can conceal a lot of evil-doing and protect the perpetrators from consequences.