South Africa

South Africa

Parliament diary: ANC doesn’t want FIFAgate to cross the River Jordaan

Parliament diary: ANC doesn’t want FIFAgate to cross the River Jordaan

The DA wants Parliament’s portfolio committee on Sport & Recreation to summon the local FIFA officials who were at the helm when South Africa won its 2010 World Cup bid, so they can explain the country’s role – or lack thereof – in the FIFA corruption scandal. ANC MPs continue to insist that the person best placed to account to Parliament is the Sports Minister – never mind that he was still in the ANC Youth League at the time. By REBECCA DAVIS.

The meetings of Parliament’s portfolio committee on Sport & Recreation are not always very well attended by journalists – or, indeed, MPs. On Tuesday, however, it was a full house. That’s because the DA’s Shadow Sports Minister, Solly Malatsi, had put out a statement in advance saying that the DA would “formally place a briefing from SAFA officials, including Danny Jordaan and Molefi Oliphant”, on the agenda.

Malatsi also said that former President Thabo Mbeki, former Deputy Finance Minister Jabu Moleketi and former Minister of International Relations Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma should be summoned to appear before the committee.

The thought of Mbeki, in particular, receiving a decree demanding he come to a portfolio meeting was never likely to wash very well with the ANC MPs on the committee. But how can you argue with the idea that the people at the top of FIFA at the time of the contentious payments are the people in the best position to explain what the hell was going on?

We were about to find out.

Committee chair Beauty Dlulane, an ANC MP, was clearly not best pleased by the presence of so many journalists. At one stage she said she needed “protection” from media “harassment” about the FIFA issue. Dlulane also accused opposition MPs of playing to the media, and warned that the committee could not let its agenda be shaped by media reports.

Dlulane would probably have been quite content if the entire meeting had been taken up with the discussion of a presentation by Swimming SA. At certain points it looked like it might be, as MPs swapped stories of childhood reluctance to swim. Dlulane herself told a story about going swimming in a dam and then discovering it to be full of snakes.

Swimming SA’s Jace Naidoo reassured MPs: “There’s been swimming in black communities for years”. Later, explaining the body’s commitment to getting women swimming too, Naidoo said that they “look after the ladies” with a day of water aerobics and “then send them home to their husbands tired”.

This lady was quite tired by the time swimming was put to bed and the issue of Malatsi’s contentious statement was raised. Dlulane complained that Malatsi had “given the impression” that FIFA officials would be present at the meeting.

“I didn’t invite any Jordaan and Oliphant,” Dlulane insisted. That much was clear. Other ANC MPs said that it was imperative that the committee should wait for FIFA’s international inquiry to take its course before hauling anyone in for a grilling.

The DA had support from other opposition MPs, however. The NFP’s Mandlenkosi Mabika wanted to know how long the committee should keep getting its updates on the FIFA situation from the media. “We don’t want to get these stories in installments,” Mabika said.

The DA’s Darren Bergman accused the committee of being both puppets and muppets, but particularly puppets: “puppets of the [Sports] Minister”, to be precise.

Chair Dlulane didn’t like that. “We are not puppets,” she snapped. Dlulane also hinted at some sort of darker story behind the FBI’s investigation, asking why the USA was only acting on all this now.

Cut to a brief sideshow where DA’s Malatsi snitched on the ANC’s Manana for turning off UDM MP Mncedisis Filtane’s microphone while Filtane was speaking, in order to silence him. Manana was made to apologise to Filtane.

The ANC’s Samuel Mmusi repeated the notion that the committee should not be calling anyone until the USA’s investigation was completed. Even then, he said, it is Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula who reports to the committee and not Oliphant or Jordaan.

At this point chair Dlulane announced that she had received an email giving an update on SAFA’s response to the bribery claims. Dlulane, who was struggling with her voice due to illness, began to hoarsely read the email aloud until it was suggested it be distributed to all the committee members to read on their own.

Oddly, nobody seemed minded to point out that the email – which was presented as a letter from SAFA to the committee – was actually a statement which SAFA had put out a full three days previously, and which had been widely published by the media. Dlulane appeared never to have encountered it before, and the UDM’s Filtane thanked Dlulane for drawing their attention to it, saying it “opens up a lot”.

The ANC’s Manana here introduced a reason for not being able to call Jordaan and Oliphant which other ANC MPs also seized upon and ran with: because the matter was “sub judice”. (This suggestion was rubbished by law professor Pierre de Vos on Twitter, because there are no criminal charges pending against Jordaan and Oliphant in South Africa.)

Manana would go on to suggest that the reason the opposition was so bent on pursuing Jordaan in this matter was to push an “agenda” – namely, the prize of Nelson Mandela metro, where Jordaan has just taken up a mayorship. This was too much even for Dlulane, who ruled Manana out of order.

But the ANC MPs were clear: for the moment, they will only countenance Minister Mbalula appearing before Parliament. In vain opposition MPs pointed out that Mbalula had precisely nothing to do with the contentious payments. “We do have the power to call SAFA,” the DA’s Bergman appealed.

Not gonna happen. The committee voted, and a motion passed to call Mbalula to appear before it. The tentative date set for the Sports Minister’s appearance is 23 June.

“While the DA welcomes the chance to seek answers from the Minister,” Malatsi wrote in a statement after the meeting, “the individuals implicated in authorising the payment from FIFA to CONCACAF are in a far better place to provide the answers the South African public are seeking”.

And perhaps that’s precisely why they’re being kept away. DM

Photo: South African Football Association president Danny Jordaan (C) attends the inauguration ceremony of South African President Jacob Zuma in his final term at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, South Africa, 24 May 2014. EPA/MUJAHID SAFODIEN / POOL

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