South Africa, a spectacularly beautiful country and for those who have had the opportunity to visit will concede, the white men who helped develop the country probably never had any intention of leaving.
This country, that straddles the extreme south of the continent is known for many firsts, some good (like being the birthplace of a global icon – Nelson Mandela) and some really terrible (like the official Government policy of discrimination against the majority black population called Apartheid).
Ironically, the majority black South Africans, have condensed their painful history in a distorted fashion, and identified other Africans coming to seek economic opportunities in the country, as the root cause of their social and economic depredations.
Nelson Mandela holding the FIFA World Cup trophy.
These have led to the periodic flaring up of xenophobic attacks, encouraged in the media by far right elements in Government, as a means of escapism for their own complicity in the plunder of the South Africa, close to 30 years since blacks took over running the affairs of the country.
Sports wise, South Africa is a powerhouse, with iconic National sports teams like the Proteas (National cricket teams), World Champions Springboks and BlitzBoks (15s and 7s Rugby teams) and to a much lesser extent, Bafana Bafana (the National men’s football team).
The Proteas: SA National cricket team during a ODI.
While Cricket and Rugby have historically been viewed as representations of the white South African establishment, football has always been, for all intents and purposes, the elixir of the black population, a sport that majority of the country could identify with.
The Proteas have managed 8 Cricket World Cups and 6 T20 World Cups where they have made it to respectable semi-finals, while the Springboks have won the Rugby World Cup thrice, including their most recent, celebrated effort in Japan 2019.
South Africa also hosted and won the Rugby World Cup in 1995, just a few years after the end of Apartheid and their return to international Rugby, having been ostracized for several decades by the rest of the World for Government sanctioned racism.
Pres. Ramaphosa congratulates Spirngbok Capt. Kolisi in Japan.
So why, you might wonder, would the fortunes of the South African National football teams be consistently at all-time lows, since the 1996 high when Bafana Bafana won the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) after being given a through-pass by the reigning Champions at the time, Nigeria, who couldn’t participate due to political reasons.
The stars even aligned for South Africa such that in 2010, they became the first ever African country to have ever hosted the FIFA World Cup which led to an infusion of World class facilities and a massive legacy fund to boot.
Well, South African football has for close to 25 years had the omnipresence of Dr. Danny Jordaan, the current President of the South Africa Football Association (SAFA).
Jordaan became SAFA CEO in 1997, was the CEO for the failed 2006 FIFA World Cup bid and later left SAFA to take up the full-time role of CEO for the successful 2010 FIFA World Cup bid, to which he later became the executor.
He was subsequently elected SAFA President in 2013, shortly after resigning and getting paid a hefty lumpsum from his role in the South Africa 2010 LOC. For majority of the pundits of African football, it would appear that the seat had been pre-packaged for him and left open for his culinary pleasure. Unfair? For sure!
So, while South African Rugby and Cricket fortunes have grown exponentially over a similar 25-year period, the fortunes of South African football continue to wane and dwindle.
We realize that Africans strongly dislike cold hard truths, especially those about themselves, but the real reason that Danny Jordaan has been very appealing for these top football positions has much more to do with the fact that he is of mixed race.
His supporters reason to themselves that, being part-white would ideally allow him unfettered access to the all-white deep state and body corporate in the country, while by being part-black, he would ideally be acceptable to and therefore able to feel the pulse of the majority black population.
Bafana Bafana: totally underwhelming!
This feeling, though not formally acknowledged is deeply ingrained subliminally and continues to afflict South African thought processes, and within SAFA itself, has hamstrung the organization and its internal processes to the point that the availability of resources actually counts for nothing, and the country’s football has therefore fallen on bleak times.
Two years ago, during the mid-term election for CAF representative to the FIFA Council following the resignation of disgraced Ghanaian Kwesi Nyantakyi, majority of Sub-Sharan Africa thought that Jordaan was the perfect replacement.
Bolstered by his impressive CV and accomplishments, plus the fact that he was the only existing FA President in the World to have hosted a successful FIFA World Cup yet somehow had been excluded from the FIFA Council, many felt that the time was nigh for him to get his just reward for diligent service to the game we all love so much.
Members of CAF’s “Muslim brotherhood”, a coterie of African FA Presidents and their hangers-on who profess the Islamic faith, and who have organized themselves in such a way that they can sell their influence to the highest bidder, told anyone who would listen, that Jordaan was a walking disaster waiting to happen, and that they would NEVER elect him to the FIFA Council, for he would in effect be a time bomb.
Go to hell, many shouted…
Walter Nyamilandu who trounced Jordaan for FIFA Council seat.
And so it came to pass, at the vote in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm Al Sheikh in September 2018, that the brotherhood had closed ranks on Jordaan, handing him a humiliating defeat at the hands of the non-starter, Mickey Mouse FA President of Malawi, Walter Nyamilandu.
All Danny Jordaan supporters, reeling from this defeat, felt betrayed and humiliated in early 2019, when he, often thought to be a man of principle, capitulated to the Ahmad kakistocracy at CAF, and in the process was thrown a few crumbs, in the form of 3rd Vice-Presidency of the Confederation.
Who better would know of Danny Jordaan’s treachery than Dennis Mumble, the former SAFA CEO from 2013 – 2018 and former COO 2009-2013 and who has been associated with SAFA for almost 20 years?
In a confidential report titled “Governance challenges at SAFA” which was sent to the SAFA Council earlier this month. Mumble lays bare the intricate details of the mismanagement by Danny Jordaan of the most popular sport in the country, in the process vindicating the claims by the CAF Muslim brotherhood and giving us a window into the working of the mind of this enigma of South African football.
Danny sold out Amaju Pinnick in Cairo, July 2019.
The report, a product of a highly organized and regimented mind, written emotionlessly but with crystal clarity, is the missing link to explain the serious problems facing South African football.
Three weeks ago, Swiss law courts threw out a criminal case against several former German FA (DFB) officials who had been indicted for the payment of CHF 10 million bribe to FIFA Executive committee members, for the award of the FIFA World Cup 2006 hosting rights to Germany, on the pretext of being time-barred, thereby exceeding the statute of limitations for bringing such cases to trial.
This dismissal was the byproduct of secret negotiations between Swiss AG Micheal Lauber and FIFA President Gianni Infantino that have in part led to a vote this week by the Swiss parliament to open impeachment proceedings against the former for incompetence or conflict of interest.
South Africa also have a similar scandal where Danny Jordaan (as CEO of the World Cup 2010 LOC) facilitated the payment of $10 million to members of the FIFA Executive committee (now rebranded to FIFA Council) as a bribe for the award of the 2010 World Cup hosting rights.
CROOKS! Swiss axis of evil: Infantino, Lauber and Arnold.
These revelations came out in 2015 following the Fifa-gate scandal that led to the indictment of Jack Warner (former FIFA vice president and executive committee member) by the US Department of Justice for selling his vote to the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
In 2016, FIFA publicly acknowledged for the first time that some of its officials had received $ 10 million in order to grant votes in favour of South Africa for the hosting rights to the 2010 World Cup.
Apparently, Jack Warner used his son Daryan as the intermediary to engineer this $10 million bribe on behalf of the FIFA Exco members.
The South African officials, in their defence conceded that they paid $10 million but that it was not a bribe rather that it was a donation to CONCACAF (The confederation for North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) where Jack Warner was President 1990 – 2011.
The money, was supposedly channeled through the Diaspora Legacy Programme, to be “administered and implemented directly” by Jack Warner.
Daryn and Jack Warner: Father-son tag-team from hell.
So real were these bribery claims by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and a separate FIFA Ethics invetigation that Jordaan had to drop his bid for a FIFA Council seat in 2017, opting instead to run a for the lower seat on the CAF Executive Committee (ExCo).
In 2017, Danny Jordaan and a delegation of Warrick Radford from Norton’s Inc and Gilbert Marcus, SC (lawyers) travelled to New York to make their case to District Attorney for the Southern District of New York, under whose jurisdiction the FIFAgate investigation and attendant bribery and money-laundering investigation fell.
Only a complete idiot would believe that the payment of $10 million was for anything else apart from being a bribe for the hosting rights, but as they say in New York, it’s not what you know but what you can prove in court…
For now Jordaan and the so-called two co-conspirators in this plot are off the hook, as the US DoJ drills down on the role of the Turners and the likes of former FIFA SG Jerome Valcke.
But this anecdotal story had a purpose, to give us a glimpse of the seriously disturbed mind of Jordaan.
Upon arrival in South Africa in 2017 from New York, Jordaan was met at the airport by his two (of 4) VPs Lucas Nhlapo and Elvis Shishana, whom he proceeded to lie to that he had travelled to the US to sign a cooperation agreement with the US FA. However, midway through the explanation, he was called away to meet former Tanzania FA President Jamal Malinzi who was in transit at the same airport.
Dennis Mumble came upon the duo who were waiting for Jordaan, and unwittingly explained to them the real purpose of the trip, to say that the two VPs were enraged would be an understatement, considering also that Nhlapo chaired the SAFA ad hoc committee on the matter, but had been kept in the dark all through.
Jordaan would subsequently instruct his secretariat not to make any further reports or mentions of the New York issue to anyone, even his own SAFA Council.
However, due to the fallout surrounding his misleading the VPs on the New York trip, Jordaan became increasingly uncomfortable and paranoid with their continued presence in SAFA, and the possibility that they were plotting against him at the ballot that he chose to surprise them with snap SAFA elections, before they had time to rally against him.
Jordaan therefore had his minions from SAFA Umkhanyakude in Kwazulu-Natal submit a motion 3 days after the constitutionally determined deadline, even though, the late submission was subsequently condoned by SAFA Congress, in accordance with Article 27.6 of the SAFA Statutes.
SAFA Congress approved the motion to change the election date.
What sort of colonial horseshit is this in the 2nd decade of the 21st Century?
You would imagine that this wrapped up the $10 million bribe issue, wouldn’t you? Wrong!
On 23rd April 2018, Danny had unofficially moved his office to the Hyde Park shopping centre, likely to evade certain people in the run-up to the snap elections of May 2018.
He summoned the SAFA CEO Dennis Mumble there, and introduced to him to two gentlemen, one being the Secretary of the Gauteng Provincial Sports Council Yaseen Lombard and another morbidly obese man who claimed to work for the National Treasury.
In characteristic Danny fashion, he begged away from this gathering, claiming he had prior engagements in the same building, and left Mumble to be briefed by the two men of a proposal that they had brought him.
The man from the National Treasury claimed to have knowledge of an allocation in the Government budget of USD10 million owed to SAFA in reimbursement for the bribe paid to FIFA for the 2010 vote, and that both men could help SAFA retrieve this money.
Former SAFA CEO Dennis Mumble.
To signal the urgency of the matter, the National Treasury man whispered that Malusi Gigaba, the former Finance Minister, had plans to use that money for other purposes (wink, wink).
However, the two men were obviously not there on a humanitarian mission and they then stated that they would need a finder’s fee of 20% of the USD10 million to retrieve this money.
Whilst Mumble was non-committal on the proposal for obvious reason, he reached out severally to the then DG for Sport & Recreation, Mr Alec Moemi, who on more than several occasions reiterated to him that the South African government could find no record of this debt to SAFA.
For the avoidance of doubt, the DG for sport & recreation invited Mumble to view the large book containing the Governments schedule of payments to verify that there was no outstanding amount of $10 million owed to SAFA.
Yaseen Lombard: SG Gauteng Sports Council.
Why then would Danny Jordaan believe these conmen, and even place his CEO in such a position as to be dealing with them?
You can get a glimpse into the diabolical mind of Jordaan from his reaction to news that the SAFA CEO had reservations about the authenticity of the claims made by the two gentlemen, promptly removing him from those deliberations and replacing him with Gay Mokoena, the Chairman of the SAFA Finance committee, who later claimed to have managed to negotiate the finder’s fee downward to 10%.
It is currently impossible to verify whether the South African Government reimbursed the bribe money or not…
We begin to get the sense that just like African football took a literal nosedive following the ascension to the FIFA Presidency by Sepp Blatter, and open season of FIFA –sanctioned corruption by FA Presidents, South African football fortunes followed a similar trajectory with the arrival of Danny Jordaan and his diabolical inclinations.
To be continued…
Part 2: Jennifer Ferguson rape and attempt to set up Irvin Khoza
1 comment
FIFA = SAFA = CORRUPT
Danny Jordaan elected into Safa Exco was and still is corrupt, criminal and unconstitutional.