A photo taken on May 29, 2015 shows FIFA President Sepp Blatter (left)
and FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke attending the 65th FIFA
Congress in Zurich. Blatter on June 2, 2015 resigned as president of
FIFA as a mounting corruption scandal engulfed world football's
governing body. AFP PHOTO | MICHAEL BUHOLZER
In recent days we have been riveted by stories of corruption in
world football that led eventually to the stubborn supremo of Fifa to
announce his resignation.
That was after having just
been re-elected only four days earlier. We must give the devil his due.
Sepp Blatter resigned because he could see that the storms were truly
gathering this time.
Contrast that to Ivory Coast
former president Laurent Gbagbo, who tried to steal re-election at the
end of 2010. He refused to hand over power and, as rebels and
international forces closed in on him, he dug in.
After
he lost every territory in Ivory Coast except State House, he still
refused to give it up. And when, in April 2011, tanks and rebels were
breaking down the front door of State House, he hid in an underground
cell with his wife, still claiming he was president of a 15 square-metre
hole.
However, we need to gain the right lessons from
the Fifa bribes affair. Everyone is calling for “reform” and honest
leaders, but that does not seem to be the real problem.
It
seems that Fifa’s cash cow, the World Cup, and apparently the source of
much of the corruption, has to all intents and purposes become a
useless thing.
The World Cup, like the Olympics —
another increasingly worthless undertaking — was conceived in a very
different world. That was the age before commercial aeroplane travel,
when a team would travel for weeks by ship — and camel and horseback —
to the games in a host country.
DRAMATIC EDUCATION
The
participants would meet the kinds of people they did not know existed
on the other side of the world, and the hosts too would have a dramatic
education about the Earth they inhabited and its people.
So,
in times past, you would arrive at the games not aware of the talents
of the other athletes. Even up to 1936 — and indeed for another four
decades after that — it was possible for an American star and field
sensation to arrive at the Berlin Olympics and blow away Adolf Hitler’s
racist prejudices and stun the world with a record-breaking 100 metres
run (and win three other golds in 200 metres, long jump, and the 4x100
metres relay too).
However, every footballer and
athlete today arrives at a competition with the data on all the games or
races (including the one in his village) in the world he has been
involved in at the fingertips of sports journalists and commentators.
Even the names of their dogs and cats are known. So there might be
upsets, but no surprises.
During the Africa Cup of
Nations this year (Afcon 2015), in the semi-finals moreover, you would
have thought that all African football fans would have been following
“our thing” and not be obsessing with the English Premier League. But on
all the days when there was an Afcon match and a Premier League game on
at the same time, I kept score of the trending topics (in Kenya at
least), and almost all the time the Premier League beat Afcon hands
down.
TOURSM MARKETING
So,
World Cups and Olympics are becoming nothing more than tourism
marketing and image-pimping exercises for authoritarian governments with
deep pockets.
Because they have pots of money, and
often are unaccountable, competing against similar countries and a few
democratic ones (that have nosy parliaments and media watching how they
spend taxpayers’ money), they are happy to bribe crooks in Fifa and
regional football authorities for the right to host.
Among
other things, this is bidding up the cost of hosting Olympics and World
Cups, and all they are doing is leaving behind bankrupt treasuries or
impoverished citizens. Even Brazil nearly collapsed under the weight of
holding the last World Cup.
South Africa blew its
fortune on the 2010 World Cup, and after the euphoria we all got from it
faded, it was left with jobless, frustrated citizens who took out their
machetes and clubs and went out to kill and rob African immigrants in
xenophobic attacks recently.
If the world is so
connected by travel, internet, 24-hour cable TV, and we can see our
favourite players and watch the world’s best athletes running against
each other in thrilling contests every week, why do the Brazilians have
to bankrupt their country and provoke national unrest by holding a World
Cup?
The author is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com). Twitter@cobbo3
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