| Election ends dark chapter in SA soccer - 03/10/2009 |
The Witness: It’s been an overwhelming week in South African football. The victory of Kirsten Nematandani in the SA Football Association presidential elections should not have come as that much of a surprise Safa’s chairman of referees was the number two candidate for the Football Transformation Forum that was backing Danny Jordaan, and there was always a chance the LOC chief executive would be judged ineligible to run. And yet it hit home like a bombshell. And so, perhaps, came to an end an era at Safa that would best be forgotten. A period in which the national team has slipped from the top 30s to 73, and has exited two African Nations Cup tournaments in the first round and not qualified for the next one in Angola.
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Full column in The Witness
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| 2010 prostitution debate hots up 02/10/2009 |
Nikolaus Eberl, Business Day: As the debate as to whether prostitution should be legalised in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup is heating up, and human rights groups are engaging in a fierce battle on the merits of any such action, it is worthwhile to cast our gaze back to the previous FIFA hosts and examine how potent a combination football and prostitution are not just in word but, more importantly, in deed. Before the 2006 World Cup, a similar debate was raging throughout Germany. The minister for family affairs, Renate Schmidt, got the ball rolling by making the interior ministry responsible for blocking an influx of illegal prostitutes from abroad.
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Full Business Day column
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| Khoza must be a man - 29/09/2009 |
Irvin Khoza must be a man and accept the fact that an unknown, Kirsten Nematandani, is the new president of the South African Football Association (Safa), writes iafrica.com’s Khaya Ndubane. I have always known Irvin Khoza as man of honour, but his reported stunt to challenge the results of a democratically elected president - Kirsten Nematandani - on the basis that he will be ’a pawn’ to Danny Jordaan leaves me cold. Khoza had his chance to contest the elections, but he and Jordaan decided to withdraw from the race at the last minute, thereby paving way for Nematandani to become the new Safa president. The sooner Khoza accepts that, the better it will be for the South African soccer.
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Full iafrica.com column
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| Only in South Africa 28/09/2009 |
Rodney Hartman, The Star: The annual general meeting of the SA Football Association probably revealed less about football and more about the eccentricities of public life in South Africa. The media were not allowed to attend and, if eyewitness reports were accurate, no fewer than 120 police officers were on duty.
Even if it is legally able to do so, what kind of sports body bars the media from its AGM? With ’transparency’ the popular buzzword, you would think the national federation of South Africa’s most popular sport would at least make a pretense to play along.
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Full column in The Star
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| Nematandani inherits divided body 28/09/2009 |
The Dispatch: We hope newly elected SA Football Association (Safa) president Kirsten Nematandani will be up to the task of unifying this divided organisation and pulling it out of the quagmire it is in. If reports in weekend media are anything to go by, then our football is in a serious crisis. It will take strong leadership from the new president to turn things around and unfortunately, he does not have the luxury of time. Without a doubt this is his most challenging task ever. The country expects him to provide strong leadership and clear direction if South Africa is to make next years World Cup the success we have promised to the world.
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Full editorial in The Dispatch
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| Prostitution under the spotlight 24/09/2009 |
Michael Cassidy, The Witness: Recent articles and letters in The Witness on the subject of prostitution reveal the issue as not only controversial and confusing but sensitive and emotive. What has brought the matter to the fore was an initial government proposal to legalise prostitution before the 2010 World Cup so that we could try to lay on good fornication in between good football. In any event, it is a cynical, amoral proposal, and should be resisted, even if, as I gather, it is temporarily shelved until 2011. Of course, prostitution has been around almost since the beginning of time. But it has been a tragic reality and one that takes the whole sexual experience away from how God planned it within the framework of marital commitment and out into the random arena of the trivialisation and commercialisation of sex.
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Full column in The Witness
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| The answer to Bafana’s woes 21/09/2009 |
Khaya Ndubane, iafrica.com: When Bafana failed to qualify for next year’s African Cup of Nations (Afcon), SAFA promised to provide strong opposition to prepare the team for the World Cup, so why then were Bafana pitted against 131st ranked Madagascar on Saturday?
With all due respect to Madagascar - who have never qualified for the Afcon - they are an average team which can be beaten by a PSL team and one wonders as what SAFA were hoping to achieve by bringing the team to South Africa. SAFA’s excuse was that they wanted to give locally based players a chance to impress coach Joel Santana, but how were they going to impress Santana by playing against a largely unimpressive team is anybody’s guess.
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Fill iafrica.com column
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| Why didn’t SA see the disaster looming? - 21/09/2009 |
Tim Cohen, Business Day: It’s been a year since Lehman, and what have we learnt? According to one school of thought, there is not much for SA to learn. We were a distant, bemused spectator to the financial maelstrom that hit us only a glancing blow. But, in fact, the numbers demonstrate SA was intimately part of the crisis, which aggravated a downturn that began before Lehman and its associated drama. SA was lucky. The 2010 World Cup initiated higher government spending before the crisis, giving SA a head start in ’shovel-ready’ state intervention.
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Full Business Day column
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| ’Rumble in the Jungle’ - 20/09/2009 |
Somewhere in the annals of boxing history lies a watershed moment dubbed the ’Rumble in the Jungle’. Now we’re in for a replay of that bloody bout of fisticuffs. A Sunday World editorial notes that the battle for the SAFA leadership, which pits Irvin Khoza against Danny Jordaan this week, is marked by the same intensity and hype as that 1974 blow-by-blow encounter in Zaire between Muhammed Ali and George Foreman. But while the status of boxing was raised by the Rumble in the Jungle, the rumble in the football jungle could have the opposite effect unless the victor is actually the right man for the job.
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Full Sunday World editorial
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| Mud Island celebrates 2010 qualification - 19/09/2009 |
The Weekender: Of course, we’re all chuffed as cheerleaders that Brazil have booked their places for 2010. What would a World Cup be without the Samba Kings? The same goes for England, if only because the rest of the planet will have someone to gang up against. Spread the hatred, sports lovers. The latter’s qualification for the World Cup went down a treat on Mud Island. The headline that greeted the news in The Sun, that redoubtable barometer of what the thoughtless might think if they could scrape together a thought between them, was quite a piece of work.
’Get De Beers in,’ smirked the banner across the front page, much of the rest of which was covered by, umm, this: ’Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Table Mountain, Zola Budd, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Kevin Pietersen, wildebeest, Ernie Els, Jacob Zuma, giraffes, Charlize Theron, Springboks, Jody Scheckter and that girl runner who looks like a bloke
’
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Full column in The Weekender
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| A reason for the drop in performances? 14/09/2009 |
Khaya Ndubane, iafrica.com: Let’s roll back a few months, on the eve of the Confederations Cup, when Bafana players wanted millions of rands in bonuses and the ever-compromising SAFA agreed to cough up. The result? Bafana came close to beating both Brazil and Spain and everyone started thinking South Africa has a team to could well in next year’s World Cup. Fast forward to today, and we see that Bafana have lost six (yes, six) consecutive matches since the Confederations Cup. Guess what? The difference is that Bafana players are now paid a mere R50 000 for a win
perhaps a reason for the drop in performances?
South Africans must brace themselves for another humiliation in 2010 when South Africa could well become the only host country in over 20 years to fail to advance from the opening round of the World Cup.
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Full iafrica.com column
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| Save the nation, fire Santana - 12/09/2009 |
Tumo Mokone, Sport24: The most shocking thing about the poor form of Bafana Bafana is the general silence. There is no audible outcry. Everyone is talking in murmurs, from the fan in the street to the SA Football Association (Safa) bosses, right up to the sports ministry in parliament. The reaction to the national team’s lack of quantifiable progress and plan should be top of the agenda in the national debate, more so that this national team must represent the country in the World Cup next year. We are the hosts, for heaven’s sake and still we cannot put together a decent team that can play competitive soccer. Head of our problems is coach Joel Santana.
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Read the full column
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| Another 2010 endorsement 05/09/2009 |
Lesiba Langa, The Sowetan: I recently had the great honour of meeting legendary American National Basketball Association superstar Dikembe Mutombo. The 2,18m Mutombo is in the country to participate in the Basketball without Borders programme, where stars spread the word about basketball and improve the infrastructure. Giving back has always been a Mutombo trademark, but this week he threw his not inconsiderable weight behind the 2010 World Cup, by endorsing South Africa as a credible host. He points out that even back in his country, the people are already planning to drive down from Congo to be part of the festivities.
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Full column in The Sowetan
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| End of the road for McCarthy? - 31/08/2009 |
Khaya Ndubane, iafrica.com: Bafana Bafana coach Joel Santana made his intentions clear on the Benni McCarthy issue when he snubbed the striker ahead of the Confederations Cup showpiece in June, but many still McCarthy would make a return to the Bafana fold because ’South Africa does not a proven goal-scorer’. And with McCarthy pledging to play for his country at the World Cup in 2010, many believed that his ’patriotism’ would persuade Santana to include him in his squad, but that is clearly not the case. The question on everyone’s mind is whether Santana will go into the World Cup without McCarthy, and judging from Santana’s recent selections, the answer is abundantly clear.
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Full iafrica.com column
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| Zuma addresses 2010 issues 29/08/2009 |
A lot has been said and continues to be said about President Jacob Zuma’s first 100 days in office, as is the norm in a lot of western, or so-called civilised, countries. In this country, there is a tendency to be critical from the onset, and we are only supportive when there are signs that things will turn out well. We saw this when we were awarded the rights to host the 2010 World Cup and the recent Fifa Confederations Cup, and now with 800-metre athlete Caster Semenya.
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Full column in The Witness
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| Achtung! Testing time looms for Bafana - 29/08/2009 |
Fasten your seatbelts, bitte. Bafana Bafana will fly into some hectic Teutonic turbulence in Leverkusen on Saturday. Their opponents, Germany, are a team under stress so they will seize on the friendly clash as an opportunity for some cathartic, net- busting therapy. Not that Joachim Loew’s troops are in a parlous state. They’re leading their 2010 World Cup qualification group, four points clear of Russia.
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Full Sunday Times report
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| After our lowest point 2010 will be better - 29/08/2009 |
Raymond Parsons, Sunday Times: it is dangerous to prophesy about this recession, it being the outcome of almost unprecedented global economic circumstances. Yet, to judge from previous experience, we seemed to have reached the lowest point of the recession in SA in the first half of 2009. The 2010 World Cup also provides a timeous underpinning of our economic performance over the next year or so. Next year could be one of modest but positive growth, as compared with negative growth in 2009. We must pin our hopes on a recovery in the world economy, the right domestic policy measures and the impact of the World Cup to give us better outcomes in 2010.
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Full Sunday Times column
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| Should FIFA ban vuvuzelas? - 25/08/2009 |
Khaya Ndubane, iafrica.com: The use of vuvuzelas as missiles during a MTN8 semifinal first leg match between Ajax Cape Town and Kaizer Chiefs at Newlands has re-ignited the debate on whether or not vuvuzelas should be allowed at the 2010 World Cup. PSL CEO Kjetil Siem further fuelled the fire when he changed his tune about the support of vuvuzelas, by saying he was no longer sure if ’my kids will be safe if people start throwing vuvuzelas’. But surprisingly FIFA has been silent on the issue - a sign that they are still holding on to their decision to allow vuvuzelas into the 2010 World Cup stadiums.
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Full iafrica.com column
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| 2010 communication: still no central message - 24/08/2009 |
Karin Botta, BizCommunity.com: Having attended the fourth and final National Communications Partnership (NCP) Conference last week, I hoped to gain clarity on the NCP’s communications plan and my role as a communicator in delivering on that plan. Although feeling inspired to take on an active role, I’m still unsure of what that role will be and the central message is that the NCP wishes professional communicators to champion. Despite being a brand leadership workshop for the communication industry, the session aimed to serve two functions: not only to debrief the industry on the Confederations Cup and provide a status update on the progress for 2010, but also to discuss and agree on a way forward for communication for 2010.
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Full BizCommunity.com column
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| Our turn to have the ball - 22/08/2009 |
S’Bu Manqele, business director at the Switch Group, and Gaby De abreu, creative director at the Switch Group: The role of commercial brands is generally well-established, but the value of official brands, such as those that are part of the 2010 Fifa World Cup, is often questioned, though they serve a similar function. Brands enable consumers to have a relationship with products. On their own, products tend to be geared towards function - providing the service consumers require. Brands facilitate a relationship based on a number of factors; for example, the promises made to the consumer and the platform they provide for a conversation that results in a particular choice being made. Official brands provide similar opportunities and conversation points with their audience. In the context of the 2010 Fifa World Cup, this official brand will create an experience that will become a point of reference at the World Cup in 2014.
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Full Sunday Times column
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| Bad behaviour under the spotlight - 19/08/2009 |
Hosea Ramphekwa, Pretoria News: I was appalled by the actions of the so-called fans of Kaizer Chiefs? Not only was I shocked by the behaviour of their fans but I was also disappointed by the statement Chiefs released in the aftermath of the incident on Saturday night. Though Chiefs did condemn the actions of their fans, I had a feeling that they somehow deviated from the real issue. The statement by Chiefs read: ’We may also be challenged to motivate for the banning of vuvuzelas if they are used as missiles at any given stages of their discontentment with the decisions of the officials on the field. We view such behaviour not unique to Kaizer Chiefs, but an urgent matter that requires serious intervention to be rooted out lest the country braces itself for major embarrassment when we host international events in the future.’
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Full Pretoria News column
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| Soccer hooligans disgrace SA 17/08/2009 |
It is a truism that hooliganism at soccer matches - or at any other sports event - can suck the lifeblood out of sport and must be stamped out. An editorial in The Times notes that the need for decisive action on the local front was hammered home by Saturday night’s shameful display by the Kaizer Chiefs fans who hurled empty bottles and vuvuzelas onto the pitch during their side’s MTN8 first-leg semifinal defeat at the hands of Ajax Cape Town at Newlands stadium. No one was hurt in the melee, which was apparently sparked by the fans’ unhappiness with the referee’s decisions, but it is a huge setback for South Africa and has tarnished the country’s reputation as the host nation for next year’s 2010 World Cup.
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Full editorial in The Times
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| Clinton’s real African agenda - 15/08/2009 |
Ben Travato, Sunday Times: Lil’ Hill (Hillary Clinton) was quick to deny that her visit to South Africa had anything to do with securing tickets to the finals of the 2010 Fifa World Cup. ’Besides, while we were in Lagos I managed to get Barack a whole bunch of tickets from a very nice gentleman called Al.’ Asked if she was referring to Nigerian President Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, she said she couldn’t be sure as ’all Nigerians look the same’.
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Full Sunday Times column
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| Catch a wake-up? - 15/08/2009 |
The Witness: Can the SABC please catch a wake-up? The memories of the hype and excitement of the Confederations Cup, and the promising performance by Bafana Bafana who responded so well to the big crowds that cheered them on, are still fresh in the memory. But the national broadcaster seems determined to put a dampener on all this as soon as it can. The national broadcaster continues to show midweek Bafana games delayed because of its programme of soapies. This despite the excitement created around Bafana at the Confed, and the blatantly obvious fact that there is less than a year to the June 11 World Cup kickoff, and every game South Africa play now is hugely crucial.
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Full editorial in The Witness
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| Delivering the 2010 WC promise 12/08/2009 |
Sindiswa Nhlumayo, allAfrica.com: South Africans are some of the proudest people on Earth. We take our spirit, attitude, connectedness and vibe very seriously. Visitors to South Africa may leave with their suitcases stuffed with curios and keepsakes, but what is most precious to them will be the personal stories which they share once they return to the places they call home. The 2010 World Cup, provides us with the chance to showcase the truly world-class experience we can create for visitors to South Africa. That South African World Cup experience for visitors from across the country, continent and globe is something which we, as a Tourism community, must ensure we provide each and every person who comes to enjoy the beautiful game on our shores.
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Full allAfrica.com column
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| A new found-love for playing in SA 12/08/2009 |
Mninawa Ntloko, Business Day: Much like the mysterious crop circles that have intrigued the world since they began appearing in England and in the US in the 1960s, another peculiar phenomenon is playing itself out in SA. The dogs haven’t stopped howling since last month and it seems next year’s Soccer World Cup is behind the mystery. After years of being told that moving to Europe was every South African footballer’s ultimate ambition, this theory has been turned on its head - playing in the domestic premiership has suddenly become such an attractive option that players are continuing to return to SA in droves. Former Norwich midfielder Matty Pattison apparently shrieked with excitement when his manager Bryan Gunn informed him that the English club had received a bid from Mamelodi Sundowns. Gunn gave the game when he revealed that Pattison’s decision to return to SA after all these years was motivated by a desire to impress Bafana coach Joel Santana and play in the 2010 World Cup.
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Full Business Day column
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| Our attitude has a lot to do with slow ticket sales - 10/08/2009 |
Jacob Dlamini, The Weekender: It might be tempting for some to put the news that 2010 World Cup ticket sales have been slow among Africans down to that old canard about Africans being, well, more spontaneous and less organised. But the temptation to jump to such a facile conclusion must be avoided. According to the tournament’s organisers, only 800000 of the 3,2-million tickets available have been sold to date. Of the tickets sold, 240000 have been bought by South Africans. Only a sprinkling has gone to people, mainly Ghanaians, from other African countries. The bulk of the sold tickets has gone to Europeans and North Americans.There is a complex set of reasons ticket sales have been brisk among Europeans and North Americans, and slow among Africans (for some reason, the organisers have not seen fit to tell us how Asians and South Americans are doing). However, I would wager that most of the reasons for the slow African sales have a materialist base to them.
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Full column in The Weekender
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| Who to sue over the vuvuzela? - 10/08/2009 |
Can masturbating make you deaf? Please speak up
I can’t hear you! The answer is, err
NO! According to The Lancet medical journal 97% of the world’s adult population take regular private quickies. Only 3% of people are deaf. Why do I share this information with you, you ask? Well, it’s because I’m bored
and recently I read a letter asking: Who do I sue if I’m made deaf by bellowing vuvuzelas at a 2010 World Cup match? Can I sue the vuvu blower, the vuvuzela manufacturer, the organisers of The Bay Stadium or Fifa? The answer is
err, no-one! That’s unless you want to sue yourself for asking stupid questions.
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Full column in The Herald
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| Concern over fuel shortages - 09/08/2009 |
allafrica.com editorial: While most airlines were unaffected by the recent fuel shortages at OR Tambo International Airport , there is no doubt that there is a nagging fear in the minds of most airline executives that it could happen again -- perhaps next time with more dire consequences. Little surprise, then, that the industry has welcomed Energy Minister Dipuo Peters’s decision to investigate this week’s shortage and ensure it does occur again.
Let us sort out any glitches in the system before next year’s World Cup so that we may avoid the embarrassment of having thousands of angry supporters stranded in the marbled halls of OR Tambo, a long way from the stadiums where they really want to be.
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Full allafrica.com editorial
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| President succession race divided soccer fraternity - 06/08/2009 |
Khaya Ndubane, iafrica.com: The SAFA President succession race has not only turned into a war it has also divided the soccer fraternity at large. At the centre of the succession battle is current SAFA Vice President Dr Irvin Khoza and 2010 Local Organising Committee (LOC) Chief Executive Dr Danny Jordaan. Khoza, a man affectionately known in football circles as the ’Iron Duke’ of South African football because of his heavy-handed style of management, is the favourite to take over from current President Molefe Oliphant. Khoza’s record as Chairman of both the PSL and the LOC speaks volume about the man and nobody can argue about his success in soccer. He certainly has no point to prove on that front. But many believe that Khoza has far too many leadership positions to handle already and that may in turn hamper soccer development in SA, particularly at grassroots level.
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Full iafrica.com column
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