Safa can make it right
SA GOVERNING BODY HAS POWER TO CLEAR NEMATANDANI Jordaan could be in line to answer some tricky questions.
Safa, it would seem, are suitably endowed with the power to clear former president Kirsten Nematandani from the unfairly perceived, shock six-year suspension and R140 000 fine suggested last week by an overhasty and injudicious Fifa ethics committee.
And that, on the surface, should be the end of the matter regarding the highly-respected Nematandani’s link to the unsavoury match-fixing of Bafana Bafana games prior to the hosting of the 2010 World Cup.
But it is not quite as simple as that, despite the odious fixed games being organised by the Local World Cup Organising Committee of which Nematandani had no direct connection.
Current Safa president Danny Jordaan was CEO of the organising committee at the time and any whitewashing of Nematandani, so to speak, would assuredly leave him with a few tricky questions of his own to answer from Fifa.
And it might well be recalling in the circumstances the assumption of William Butler Yeats that “too long in making a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart”.
But as the case evolves, Fifa have already come into a fair slice of criticism of their own by suggesting the sentence that should be meted out to Nematandani before the investigation into the match-fixing case is completed – something foreign to all and any judicial procedure.
Fifa have now hastily declared that Nematandani will be afforded the opportunity of stating his side of the case before any final decision is taken, while raising the question as to why they did not do so in the first place.
The overdue element in attending to the matter – the match-fixing took place almost seven years ago – can be blamed on the shenanigans of the Blatter regime before it was toppled.
But in their haste to clear up the matter, the Fifa ethics committee appear guilty of implementing a course in which two wrongs are supposed to create a right.
And it would certainly be an injustice if Safa, for their part, follow George Bernard Shaw’s regrettable assertion of “sacrificing others without blushing”.