It surely cannot be a coincidence that the name of the man at the top of the list of those who should be fired at the South African Football Association (Safa) contains the letters “V” and “Tsek”.
Vincent Tseka, team manager of Bafana, should voetsek.
For Tseka is a vanisher of visas and a blind spot for bookings, whether they be yellow cards or training venues. He is, by all accounts, great at fetching ice during games, which could feature prominently on the curriculum vitae he may be compiling for his post-World Cup job search.
Tseka’s contract terminates when Bafana’s World Cup adventure ends. He should be followed out of the door by Danny Jordaan, but, sadly, Safa’s president-for-life and his acolytes have installed revolving doors at their headquarters which they keep well-oiled and spinning hard. If “hanging on” was a sport, South Africa would be Olympic and world champions. Never was so little done for so many by so few.
From bloated team entourages at the Olympics through the nonsense of “superfans” and politicians on freebies, national teams and events attract the great unemployable like flies.
I conducted a question-and-answer lunch with former Spurs and England player Gary Mabbutt at Pirates Sports Club last Friday. He reminded me of the 2010 World Cup announcement in Zurich in May 2004 when he had been an unpaid global ambassador for the bid.
Most of the bid party stayed at a big hotel in the hills of Zurich. The hotel lobby and bar were packed with South Africans and others the night after the bid had been won. There had been a chartered flight to take them and us media to Switzerland and home.
On the way back to OR Tambo, I got talking to the guy next to me. His job? He was a driver for Safa in Joburg. What had he been doing in Zurich? He shrugged. “Nothing. They brought most of us from the office.”
Fifa are an organisation of hangers-on always ready for a selfie. After South Africa had finished their presentation, Ed Griffiths, the former Sarfu CEO, journalist and writer of bid books and autobiographies, told me: “Here’s a little scoop for you. After every other one of the presentations, the Fifa executives have had questions. After South Africa, all the delegates queued up for photographs with Madiba and to shake his hand.”
There was a time when the SABC had money to burn and they were not afraid of putting a torch to it. At the 2004 Olympics in Athens I saw a woman with official Olympic accreditation that marked her as a broadcaster with the SABC walking into the International Broadcast Centre with plastic packets of biscuits and snacks. An SABC reporter told me she had been flown over as the “tea lady”. I hoped it was a joke, but, sadly …
As their athletes flew in economy, Sascoc officials always turned left to business when travelling abroad. It was written into their rules that board officials and others flew business. It was — and may still be — seen as a reward for doing so much for sport. Athletes have complained to no avail.
In Beijing, Oscar Pistorius criticised Sascoc for poor planning ahead of the Paralympics. Again, he and the athletes flew economy class; the team kit was not ready, and the tokens to ensure they could receive drinks had not been organised.
Sascoc were furious and issued a statement condemning Pistorius, saying he had signed a contract with them that included a code of conduct clause, and they would be enforcing it. It turned out they had forgotten to get Pistorius to actually sign the thing.
Safa has a trickle-down economy when it comes to passing the blame. The infighting and factions in the board, a president up on fraud and theft charges, have created a gang of shrugs, where each mishap, each scandal is brushed off the shoulders of the bosses and down the line.
Jordaan’s reply to the visa mess was: “So, it’s not the first time that they have had these problems. But we believe that they will use that as extra motivation to do well.”
That, Danny boy, is the problem. It was not the first time. It won’t be the last. It is time for you to voetsek.
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