adminTommy Sithole in LAUSANNE, Switzerland
I WATCHED my friend Issa Hayatou, President of CAF enthusiastically adjusting the microphones for Sepp Blatter to make his acceptance/victory speech after he won the FIFA presidential election.
And I thought to myself “they will also go after him”.
Indeed, the situation has since deteriorated, much faster than any of us ever thought.
Then they started mentioning South Africa and Morocco and I thought “here we go again.”
Fikile Mbalula, always the feisty one, gave me hope with his emphatic “go to hell, we don’t give bribes” lightning quick answer.
I like the guy.
But I still didn’t sleep well.
Tossing and turning, I finally plucked enough courage to phone my childhood home mate Danny Jordaan.
How was I going to start the conversation?
Oh, he had just been installed as Mayor of my beloved Nelson Mandela Bay, Port Elizabeth as it was known then, where we grew up in the ghettos of Korsten and Kwazakhele and dodged school to play the reed flute and the boom bang conjured from plywood boxes and twine.
His two mobile numbers were both off.
Lucky me.
It was really a half attempt.
Now, the story has changed.
You can say it has assumed a life of its own – $10 million did end up being within reach of Jack Warner’s paws and a chunk of it ended up meeting rentals for Chuck Blazer’s cats, for goodness sake, for their special apartment in the luxurious Trump Tower.
A couple of days ago I watched the hysterical, or angry Warner making threats of all kinds on television.
It was a paid political advertisement.
I suppose he has enough dough stashed away somewhere to pay for this kind of stuff.
CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC, NBC, just about every self respecting broadcast station would have broadcast his every word live for free.
That’s not the issue.
It’s his ominous threat to “tell all” that shrunk my confidence even further.
What’s he going to say next?
Well, Jack ain’t going to go alone, you can bet on that.
But caution should prevail.
He could say anything, like, for instance, that some of that $10 million found their way back to the mother continent.
The boys in J Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI, would love that no less.
More so the Eurocentrics who see this as a God-send opportunity to “reclaim” world football, the politicos who have a beef with Vladimir Putin and the few others who want to cut Qatar to size because it’s now making it a habit of punching above its weight.
They say it’s the grass that suffers when elephants fight.
It’s the same, isn’t it, when they make love. Small nations are the grass here.
Canon fodder, as it were.
Whether the Europeans are fighting Putin or someone wants to keep that small Arab nation on terra firma where they belong.
I have this gnawing feeling the end is nowhere in sight.
Whoever takes over from Herr Blatter has his work cut out for him. But only if he is outwardly and inwardly a unifier.
A reassuring hand.
Step up, Sir.
Online Reporter