Safa, Caf voting for a goodie bag

Chief Sports writer Kevin McCallum says by all accounts the race for the Fifa presidency has already been decided.

To the rich go the riches. The Oscar goodie bag for the already wealthy and, this year, rather white nominees have presents that amount to well over R3-million. Mind you, in this time of cinematic exclusion and elitism, only the actor and director nominees will get the really expensive bags.

There are some weird and wonderful things in there: a first-class trip to Israel, a 15-day walking trip of Japan, a lifetime supply of skin cream, a skin-tightening procedure, free car rentals and, the cheapest of all of the freebies, an electronic ciggie. And then there is a Vampire Breast Lift (worth around R28 000). Blood is taken from the arm of the breast-bearer, and, according to Cosmopolitan, through a process of ‘spinning, and reinserting blood back into the breasts’ creates a ‘fuller, perkier cleavage’ and ‘helps make nipples rosier, perkier, and more sensitive’. In sports, we call this blood doping.

Taking blood from one part of a body and putting it back into another part of the body to make those small parts of the body fuller, perkier and rosier is a speciality of sports administrators. Jurie Roux, CEO of the South African Rugby Union stands accused of financial manipulation. Athletics South Africa were masters of it through Leonard Chuene, while their current president is under a cloud. ASA were mere backyard breast-lift hacks compared to the financial titty-twisting operation carried out on doping athletes by their parent organisation, the IAAF. None of them, though, can hold a needle or a centrifuge to the Vampire Cash Lift that is the self-enhancement practice of Fifa, where bank accounts are fuller and rosier, and executives become more sensitive and rosier of complexion when they are indicted on corruption charges by the big bad United States.

By all accounts the race for the Fifa presidency has already been decided. The Confederation of African Football announced on Friday they are backing Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa of Bahrain, the president of the Asian Football Confederation. That’s 54 votes from the continent regarded as the kingmakers in the Fifa presidency. Joao Havelange and Sepp Blatter have milked African votes for decades. Caf weren’t forcing their members to vote for Sheikh Salman, according to their statement, but: ‘While respecting the principle of democracy, the sovereignty, and latitude of each member association to vote for the candidate of its choice, the executive committee urges all the 54 member associations ... to reserve their votes for Sheikh Salman.’

Tokyo Sexwale, stiffed by Caf, was not giving up hope. He would still go to Zurich for the elections. He may even stay at the Baur au Lac, the hotel of choice for Fifa and where the Swiss police find catching dodgy football officials as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. He will go to Zurich even though his heart will be heavy and his ego bruised by the people of his own continent. He will stand in the elections as a matter of principle. He will go to Zurich and win nada. Sadly, there is no goodie bag for nominees who lose at Fifa.

There are many in Caf who do not like South Africa. They see the Rainbow Nation as arrogant and aloof. Issa Hayatou, the president of Caf, voted for Morocco to host the 2010 World Cup. Safa made the mistake of backing Ismail Bhamjee of Botswana against Issa Hayatou for the CAF presidency in 2004, which earned them no favours. Bhamjee, brother of the Abdul who did time for stealing R7.4m from the national league, got just six votes to Hayatou’s 46. Ismail Bhamjee, later banned by Fifa for selling World Cup tickets at inflated prices, said he had felt let down by the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa), of which he was president. Cosafa had asked him to stand because they did not like Hayatou’s leadership. “I was expecting at least 11 votes from the South African region and five or six votes from the East and Central African zone.”

Sexwale, who had tired CAF representatives with an election manifesto that seemed to consist solely of how he had been in prison on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela, has not said how many votes he was expecting to get, but even Safa intimated they would not be giving him the nod. Of course they wouldn’t. They and Caf won’t be voting for Sheik Salman to reform Fifa. They will, as they did for Havelange and Blatter, be voting for a big goodie bag. They will vote for the Vampire Breast Lift. Fuller. Perkier. Rosier.