Issa Hayatou and CAF - a complete joke!

It gives an awkward feeling every time one thinks about the injustices that CAF officials get away with. We share our disgruntlement in our own closed compounds and hope that things will change for the better.

Recently the SPORTFIVE and broadcasting houses issue have reached the summit. I think we are all aware of the hassles that the SABC had to go through to secure a Bafana match. Things were not always like this. Some SAFA official signed off the broadcasting rights to CAF and CAF signed the rights off to SPORTFIVE, who then gets left out in the cold? The broadcasting house of course.

It’s also interesting to note that Ibrahim Hayatou (The son of Issa Hayatou) is a vice president of SPORTFIVE. Irrespective of how we look at it, this is nepotism in the highest degree. Either way Hayatou gets to benefit on the multi million dollar deal between CAF and SportFive. This deal goes on till 2016, so there's still more than 5 years of being milked by SPORTFIVE AND CAF.

SPORTFIVE is a foreign French company. The AU has been stressing a lot about gaining independence from European assistance, yet our highly educated CAF morons decide to give the rights to a French company. If there was no catch this wouldn't have been done at all. South Africans would previously throw stones and stand against furious resistance, but the silence in this regard is appalling. Is it because we have a puppet as a SAFA president? We are a very smart nation to be reduced to the kind of people SAFA is making us to look like.

How everyone has turned a blind eye to the corruption Hayatou has been doing is just amazing. The documentary film Panorama exposed Hayatou and other 2 FIFA officials in a corruption scandal. They have received bribes from INTERNATIONAL SPORT AND LEISURE (ISL). ISL was awarded a lucrative deal for marketing rights in the World Cup. FIFA like usual were reluctant to investigate and Hayatou is still here. This sounds familiar to what we are going through with SPORTFIVE at the moment. His son is the Vice President of SPORTFIVE, isn't that enough ammunition to bring this corrupt man to book?

FIFA itself as an organisation is a corrupt entity. I hated promoting www.transparencyinsport.org because I thought the site lacked objective, but then I still wonder why corrupt officials are still kept in high regard.

CAF's tournaments pay little. You look at the CAF Champions League and how pathetic it is when compared to other Champions Leagues and wonder where all the money is going to.

Bottom line, we all have been quiet over what CAF is doing and will still do, hence there won’t be any changes in African football. Which organisation tried to stand up to Hayatou when he banned Togo for the African Cup of Nations when they had experienced trauma in Angola?

We love corruption so life will go on as usual.

By Mzansioka Mashigo