Cape Argus E-dition

The beautiful game is a dirty old game, Mama Ria

MATSHELANE MAMABOLO

THE drama that is unfolding ahead of the South African Football Association’s (Safa) presidential elections is par for the course and those crying foul or pitying Ria Ledwaba are clearly not football aficionados.

It’s just a pity she didn’t fill her supporters in, although a good number of those who gathered at the offices of the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton, Johannesburg on Tuesday have been involved in football for a long time and ought to be aware.

As the uniformed cried foul when Mama Ria could not speak at the event called by Civil Society to celebrate her nomination for the presidency, those of us who have followed the game diligently for decades were not surprised.

For starters, she had been warned not to go ahead with the event.

Of course, it is debatable as to whether the circular sent out by the Safa CEO Teboho Motlanthe barring nominees from making public pronouncements until they’d been vetted was in line with the association’s constitution. Dennis Mumble confidently said it was an unconstitutional move by Safa, the former CEO going as far as to say he was responsible for drafting the election governance policy and that there’s no way the policy could have been changed outside of congress.

Whatever the truth might be, the reality is that football politics is such that those in charge make up the rules.

Remember how, as youngsters, we used to be at the mercy of the ‘fat, rich kid’ who owned the ball as to how the game got played?

Well, Danny Jordaan is currently that fat, rich kid and whether Ledwaba and her supporters or any other nominee for the Safa presidency likes it or not, they will have to play it by his rules. And he has been in the game long enough to know just how to ‘bend’ the rules enough not to be accused and found guilty of breaking them.

The former Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Mayor has previously tried to ascend to the throne of regional football and got his ‘nose bloodied’.

I still have vivid memories of him leaving Gaborone, Botswana ‘tail between his legs’ one year after he had tried to become the president of Cosafa where the little known Sekutu Patel of the Seychelles showed him dust. Well, it was not Patel really but rather Issa Hayatou who made sure that his man of choice became the regional president.

When he tried to get into some senior positions at CAF a few years later, he again came short and eventually had to be content with being a supporter of current president Patrice Motsepe.

Of course, I am not mentioning all the above to suggest that Jordaan is getting revenge on his previous failures. I am just pointing out that football politics is dirty and those who get to the top often do so by devious means and they sometimes use unconventional means to remain there.

That rules can be changed with the impunity they appear to be at Safa with every presidential election is because the incumbents know that their competitors have little recourse.

No doubt Mama Ria’s lawyer, Leruma Thobejane, knew that rushing to go the legal route was not going to help, hence his advising her from addressing Tuesday’s gathering lest they find themselves fighting her expulsion in court while she could be using the time to campaign.

As she strives to become the first female president of Safa, perhaps Mama Ria should have dug deep into her well of football administrative experience for there she would have found lessons that would have prepared her for the dirty games she’s now entangled in.

It is a dirty old game this beautiful game, and it is likely to remain so for a long time to come.

SPORT

en-za

2022-05-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

http://capeargus.pressreader.com/article/281724093149732

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