BFA lets Infantino fly
Mqondisi Dube | Friday February 24, 2017 15:36
Gianni Infantino jetted into Johannesburg this week, held a FIFA executive summit with the continent’s 54 Football Association (FA) presidents, then flew out to Harare to attend a birthday celebration.
Botswana Football Association (BFA) president, Maclean Letshwiti made the 55 minute flight from Gaborone to Johannesburg to attend the meeting.
Other FA presidents flew for more than 10 hours to get to Johannesburg. It takes around 13 hours to fly from Zurich, the FIFA headquarters, to Johannesburg. And when Infantino had flown all the way to be within Gaborone’s touching distance, the BFA leadership let him slip.
Instead, today, Infantino is in Harare at the invitation of COSAFA and Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) president, Philip Chiyangwa to attend a birthday celebration.
BFA could have persuaded the Swiss-Italian lawyer to at least pass-by Gaborone before or after the Johannesburg summit. There would be no other gilt-edged opportunity than this.
The last time a FIFA president visited Botswana was in 2013 when Joseph Sepp Blatter paid a courtesy call on then BFA president, Tebogo Sebego.
While Letshwiti made the Johannesburg trip where the meeting discussed pertinent issues, including the allocation of World Cup slots for Africa and development programmes, Botswana has its own local challenges.
Had Infantino visited, he would have appreciated these challenges first hand, and with the fight for relevance both in Africa and the world, BFA would have done itself a favour through inviting Infantino. Letshwiti and Infantino would have exchanged notes in a more relaxed Lekidi atmosphere rather than rushed and packed Johannesburg.
Infantino would have appreciated his predecessor, Blatter’s famed Goal Project, which has pushed African football several notches up. The Lekidi Centre is a product of FIFA’s Goal Project while there are bottlenecks in attempts to spread it to Francistown.
While the relocation of the FIFA development office from Gaborone to Johannesburg was already work in progress long before Infantino even thought about contesting for the FIFA presidency, it was going to be helpful for him to appreciate development challenges Botswana football, and to a larger extent, Africa, face.
This might, force the president to reconsider some decisions, particularly the one which has seen Africa remain with just two development offices from the initial five.
Chiyangwa this week described Letshwiti as a “strong supporter” and with Infantino backing any manoeuvres to remove long serving Issa Hayatou, he would have considered a Gaborone visit.
Chiyangwa said Letshwiti is the reason why he ascended to the COSAFA top post. Letshwiti could have used his links with Chiyangwa, who appears to have Infantino’s ear, to push for the FIFA president’s visit.
On another note, Letshwiti should have travelled to Harare, to a gathering, which for all intents and purposes, is meant for political gain.
While the meeting has been carefully wrapped as a birthday celebration, it clearly comes across as a political rally to drum up support for Hayatou’s rival, Ahmad, a former government minister in Madagascar.
Infantino’s presence in Harare is seen as a tacit sign of support for the anti-Hayatou camp.
Clearly there would be a roll call in Harare and ramifications of being absent might be felt in future, as the power cake would likely be shared at this gathering.
Despite CAF expressing misgivings about the Harare meeting, the presence of Infantino, a man way above Hayatou, should have given Letshwiti enough courage to fly to Harare.
After all aligning with Hayatou has not brought any benefits for Southern Africa, therefore, there should be no fears or apologies for openly backing the Madagascan.
The consequences cannot be dire than what Southern Africa has already suffered under the Hayatou leadership.