The 2015 edition of the University of the Witwatersrand Power Reporting conference began with an outline of the coverage of the FIFA corruption scandal by Insight investigative journalism division of the Sunday Times (UK).
After a schedule that also included discussions on ‘data journalism’, the ‘fatal activities of
Australian mining companies’ and the role of bankers and lawyers in offshore
tax havens a second sporting scandal was unearthed. And it was on the global sport that is cricket.
In contrast to the investigative report on football, the
International Cricket Council (ICC) was laid bare via an incisive documentary film,
‘Death of a Gentleman’ done by two cricket journalists/bloggers that was shown at
the end of the first day of the conference.
In both exposés there is damning evidence of corruption that
however ends up being ambivalently dealt with or downright ignored. But there is no doubt left in the mind of the
newsreader or documentary viewer that there is definitely more than something
fishy that has been going on in football and cricket over the last decade.
And Africa or at least African member states of FIFA and the
ICC get some mention too. Nigerian football
administrators are implicated in bribes while one of Zimbabwe’s former cricket chiefs is seen at a
controversial meeting to change the rules of the ICC.
Moreover, as part of the smaller countries that have disproportionate
votes on both sports world bodies, Africa appears to be complicit in shady
deals of powerful executives who want flagship world tournaments to be awarded
in specific ways. For example the simultaneous
awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments to Russia and Qatar respectively is fraught
with irregularities that included a dinner hosted in Johannesburg at a
ridiculous US$1m cost. The latter
however eventually ended up costing US$200 thousand with the remainder unaccounted
for. Both by way of actual money and not knowing from whence the money had come
from.
In cricket, it is the power of the Indian Cricket Board that
is brought to bear on South Africa through threats to withdraw its cricket team
from touring the latter. This reportedly led Cricket South Africa to accede to
demands for support of reform of the ICC.
It is these weak and vulnerable position that African member
states find themselves in that make them susceptible to not only corruption but
also a damning complicity in compromising fair competition in global sporting competitions.
And it will not end with football or cricket. There is obviously another can of worms that
will emerge from the recently announced report on doping in athletics and we
are yet to hear of the potentially shady deals that have been going on in the
International Amateur Athletics Federation. At least it will be about doping.
Though anyone would also welcome inquiries into how the International Olympic committee
also awards bids to host the Olympics.
In all of this, as it
probably is the world over, it is African sporting fans that lose out. They begin to not only doubt the transparency
and fairness of global sporting competitions but are also caught between a rock
and a hard place. From the love they exhibit for these various sports
disciplines, expressions of nationalism and identity in global competitions
through to the fact that it may all, in the final analysis, be contrived and
patently unfair.
Not that this is or will be peculiar to the African
continent but it helps to have Africans also joining the global derision of
global sports executives, the administrative bodies and associated governments for
a job badly done.
Finally, it was an Angolan journalist at the conference who asked a question that was reflective of the
broader dimension to these sporting scandals.
His question was, and I am paraphrasing here, whether these sporting scandals
are not symptomatic of deeper disorder and lack of transparency in other bigger
international organizations that deal with the global economy and peace.
*Takura Zhangazha wrties here in his personal capacity
(takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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