The recent Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) tournament in Morocco was one of the most successful, despite the controversial end to the final match. Senegal’s Teranga Lions vanquished Morocco’s Atlas Lions, despite biased refereeing and a hostile Moroccan crowd.
However, questions continue to swirl around the Cairo-based Confederation of African Football (CAF), headed by Patrice Motsepe, the 64-year-old South African billionaire and owner of the all-conquering Mamelodi Sundowns.
Motsepe was controversially elected to a four-year term as CAF president in 2021. Fifa’s controlling Italian-Swiss president, Gianni Infantino, pressured the three other candidates to step down in exchange for senior posts in CAF, to allow Motsepe to be elected unopposed. All three had decades of football administration experience, which Motsepe lacked.
Infantino’s Congolese friend from the University of Fribourg, Veron Mosengo-Omba, a former Fifa official and Swiss citizen, was installed as CAF’s new general secretary. Motsepe fulfilled his Faustian bargain by delivering CAF’s 54 votes in support of Infantino’s imperial third presidential term in 2023.
The Guardian newspaper in London has since published a series of articles detailing Mosengo-Omba’s reported autocratic and unaccountable leadership of CAF. He was accused of transferring bonuses into his personal Swiss bank account worth five times the maximum perks in his employment contract.
Though the Swiss public prosecutor declined to press charges due to a lack of sufficient evidence, the damning allegations have damaged CAF’s reputation.
The Congolese was also charged with creating a toxic environment of fear in which employees had been sacked for speaking out. Notable expulsions include Hannan Nur, the former head of CAF’s governance, risk and compliance unit, and Abiola Ijasanmi, its COO. Mosengo-Omba was further accused of appointing Congolese nationals to senior positions for which they were unqualified.
CAF’s governance unit accused Mosengo-Omba of obstructing its work, violating internal governance and auditing regulations, and seeking to “whitewash” its internal investigation. Motsepe instituted an independent investigation but failed to suspend Mosengo-Omba, who has denied all charges. The CAF president also expressed “total confidence” in his beleaguered general secretary.
Another damning allegation reported by The Guardian as having been made against Motsepe by a senior CAF staff member was that “in four years of his mandate, he only came twice [to Cairo] and met the staff once. He doesn’t have a clue what’s going on inside his own confederation.”
More positively, Motsepe has increased annual contributions to the 54 African federations from $150,000 to $400,000, having inherited a $41m debt, with CAF reporting a $9.48m profit in 2023/24. However, its audit committee alleged in 2024 that more than $16m in “unrecognised expenses” were excluded from official accounts.
Worryingly, amid these challenges Motsepe was again elected unopposed as CAF chief last year. Just before the start of Afcon last December he unexpectedly announced that the biennial competition would be held every four years from 2028. Afcon has traditionally been CAF’s main money spinner.
Accusations have persisted that Infantino controls CAF from Zurich. In 2020 he dismissed Afcon’s arrangements as “useless”, suggesting the tournament be staged every four years.
There are troubling signs that African football may be relapsing into the era of corruption-riddled skulduggery witnessed during the autocratic Cameroonian Issa Hayatou’s three-decade mismanagement.
CAF is yet to explain why Morocco has been assigned the unprecedented hosting of three consecutive Women’s Africa Cup of Nations tournaments or why the country was simultaneously awarded the hosting of this year’s Afcon. Rabat belatedly withdrew from hosting the tournament in 2015 following racist arguments about Ebola in West Africa.
Motsepe must urgently explain to soccer-mad Africans what is going on in his confederation.
• Adebajo is professor and senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.
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