Sexwale�s campaign faltering
Dennis Keagile | Friday February 5, 2016 16:06
The highly popular Swiss administrator has recently been banned from all football related activities for eight years.
This is perhaps his lowest point and that of the Union of European Football Association (UEFA) president, Michel Platini. The two are considered to have entered into a corrupt relationship. Indeed the scandal ravaging FIFA has well been articulated but now as the clock ticks towards a new era, the big question is who among the five candidates will get the vote of football associations.
From Africa, we have Tokyo Sexwale of South Africa and the two candidates from Asia, Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan and Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain. From Europe, there is Jerome Champagne of France and Gianni Infantino of Switzerland who is of Italian stock. Unlike the other candidates, it looks like Infantino is the only one who has been requested by his continental football body, UEFA to contest. For the rest it is out of personal volition.
Perhaps it is for this reason that Sheikh Ebrahim Al Khalifa and the Confederation of African Football have apparently entered into some form of agreement or alliance to vote for the Asian football representative.
Naturally one would have thought that CAF would back Sexwale, but it had other ideas. There seem to be something between CAF and South Africa, but this is a topic for another day. But I must stress that Sexwale does not exude the confidence, passion and aggression of someone who really wants to be president of FIFA. It is more of trying his luck just because there are no suitable candidates. Not long ago even the South African Football Association raised concerns about his campaign. The organisation was basically saying Sexwale is a bit casual in his approach.
But I must say Infantino looks the more convincing especially if his proposal that the World Cup should be spread in a region or continent and not be the sole responsibility of one country. On that point, he has my support.
It is not clear what CAF hopes to benefit from its alliance with Asia. Infantino’s campaign seems well articulated while that of our own man Sexwale is not well coordinated. As a result, I see him coming out a distant third if not fourth.
Need to talk out differences
Football by its very nature an emotional sport but yet it promotes forgiveness, tolerance, unity and peace more than anything. It is a sport that abhors revenge and fully entrenches one of the Setswana values that it is better to talk out differences than jaw-jaw. Put in our language, ntwakgolo ke ya molomo.
It is therefore sad and hurting to realise that in this day and age we still have some supporters who still think and believe that violence can solve whatever differences we can have.
There are some supporters who tend to think they love the team more than others when there is a different view. It is therefore sad to learn that some sections of Township Rollers supporters recently attempted to beat former official Mookodi Seisa simply because he thinks certain things were not done properly at the club or put simply that the constitution was not properly followed when the club was handed over to Township Holdings then led by the commoner, Sommerset Gobuiwang.
For all the time I have known Seisa since his childhood school days at McConnel College he has never been a violent person nor displayed any inclination towards violence. He is a person who likes arguing his points and when you get the better of him he gives you a smile. Equally I think it is time we as sports lovers in Botswana have to appreciate the input that the likes of Seisa have made to the club while a club official of the team.
When he and like-minded minds felt aggrieved by the way the transformation of the club went, they did not resort to violence or sabotage but took the most civil route, that of lodging their grievances with the courts of law.
Though they believed that they have a winnable case, when one goes to court he or she is simply saying let us have the court to help us unravel this problem. It is a win or lose situation.
Rollers supporters should therefore be grateful that the court managed to come out with a judgement or determination that indeed the transformation of the society to a company was not properly done.
I just hope that supporters of other clubs somewhere do not copy this bad behaviour for we know that Gaborone United is at war with itself and so is Mochudi Centre Chiefs.
When supports are desperate they tend to behave but the moment they see someone with better money they completely forget that someone has been keeping the club afloat and will start accusing such persons.
I am still yet to know if Rollers intend to honour Gobuiwang for his contribution to the transformation of the club for he is the one who planted the seed of commercialisation at the club. I also hope that Jagdish Shah will not go ahead with a lawsuit against his former partner.
That said, Botswana football has come a long way and we cannot go back to the 80s and 90s where intolerance was very much ripe. The FIFA Fair Play principle applies to all structures of the game, supporters included.
I also think that it is time the Registrar of Societies together with the Botswana Football Association gave clubs guidelines as to how best to graduate or transform from a society set up to a registered company or trust.
As things stand, we are going backwards because there is no clear cut guideline hence the trial and error methodology being adopted by clubs. I want the two structures of government to start working together because unless there is a clear guideline and methodology football will always have these kinds of problems and I am afraid to say other sporting codes will also suffer the same fate.
Equally, other clubs need not laugh at Rollers but should rather use this as a learning curve for future smooth transition. Hopefully there will be peace at Rollers following the weekend’s AGM, which ushered in a new committee.