Illustrative image | Siv Ngesi. (Source: Politically Aweh Fifa Sketch); Gianni Infantino. (Source: Chalinee Thirasupa via Reuters) 
For South Africans watching the global fallout, the critique hits home: the beautiful game is increasingly becoming a playground for billionaires, oil giants and powerful political interests.
Politically Aweh has entered the conversation with a new parody video featuring actor and comedian Siv Ngesi. In the sketch, Ngesi plays an over-caffeinated, all-American Fifa spokesperson selling the 2026 World Cup as a triumph of unity, while the visuals roll out a more recognisable reality: travel bans, ICE detention centres, spiralling costs and relentless corporate greenwash.
Host KG Mokgadi says the intent is straightforward: “Football should be for everyone. When ticket prices, sponsors and politics work together to shut people out, satire becomes one of the few tools left to call it what it is.”
Follow the money: Aramco and the ‘hottest’ World Cup ever
The sketch forms part of a global campaign taking aim at climate-wrecking sponsorships in sport. The target this time is Fifa’s new headline sponsor Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company and leading carbon polluter.
With the tournament expanding to 48 teams, 104 matches, and 16 host cities, analysts warn that 2026 will be the most polluting World Cup to date, hosted in North America as it battles unprecedented heatwaves and wildfires linked to climate change.
As Ngesi says: “This summer, get ready for the hottest World Cup ever — literally.”
The parody revives a lingering question from South Africa’s own World Cup legacy: the fate of royalties from Shakira’s 2010 anthem Waka Waka, which Fifa pledged would benefit African charities. Fifteen years later, post-2014 earnings remain unaccounted for.
Ngesi skewers the delay: “Just because Shakira married, had kids and got divorced before we paid them doesn’t mean we’re not getting around to it!”
At the heart of this sketch is one message Fifa cannot ignore: protect the game, drop Aramco, stop shutting out supporters, and bring football back to the fans — not the fossil fuels. DM
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