South Africa P.I.G.

World Cup Votes For Sale

FIFA's "For the Good of the Game" and "whatever's in it for me" two senior committee members offered to sell their votes for cash. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHSsFb_t17CNzS3adKZcfF7A0qXZEkmDxEUFLjO93AucF9yKmM-rtDaRgZrgNFNBAbi9VvYFCmW3eFQ4u3EWN38EEBrqEm_53BcuKqdu0O5otHQcluAonZstDOzwCVlsv60IbM8SzkjFcc/s1600/fifaSign.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529150509530564722" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHSsFb_t17CNzS3adKZcfF7A0qXZEkmDxEUFLjO93AucF9yKmM-rtDaRgZrgNFNBAbi9VvYFCmW3eFQ4u3EWN38EEBrqEm_53BcuKqdu0O5otHQcluAonZstDOzwCVlsv60IbM8SzkjFcc/s400/fifaSign.jpg" style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 300px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 160px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>It is less than two months before Fifa executive committee members will vote in a secret ballot to decide who has won the right to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. But Fifa now finds itself investigating claims of World Cup vote corruption, after Sunday Times journalists filmed two members prepared to accept money in return for votes. But Amos Adamu (pictured below), one of the two men involved in the scandal, has denied any wrongdoing. Adamu told the Sunday Times he had been talking about business in Nigeria after the World Cup and said that his vote was not for sale. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3WIlgEPmNnb73eiceS-idyXvKUhR_m4EQpwYAKcidw1DEqfeJ6FuBXjmypM2VwOs8Dr3U0BEZerDGEo6FdVOdkXGBa62UaFeMsw41LEp0BdLYBh3Yd-vT3xWuu0EkrMB2lxPP_La2UsxF/s1600/fifa-adamu.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529170100416663586" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3WIlgEPmNnb73eiceS-idyXvKUhR_m4EQpwYAKcidw1DEqfeJ6FuBXjmypM2VwOs8Dr3U0BEZerDGEo6FdVOdkXGBa62UaFeMsw41LEp0BdLYBh3Yd-vT3xWuu0EkrMB2lxPP_La2UsxF/s400/fifa-adamu.jpg" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 225px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>The Fifa ethics committee will this week begin an investigation into a Sunday Times expose of two members of the 24-man Fifa executive committee, Amos Adamu from Nigeria and Reynald Temarii from Tahiti, who is the president of the Oceania Football Confederation. Posing as English-based lobbyists for an American consortium wanting to take the World Cup to the USA, they secured tape and film evidence of Adamu telling reporters in London that he wanted $800,000, to be paid to him personally, to build four football pitches in Nigeria. The deal was sealed last month in Cairo when Adamu gave his "guarantee" he would vote for the US in 2018. At the time it was still bidding for 2018. Adamu asked for the payments to be made through a relative who has a business in Europe. He also pledged his second preference for the US in the 2022 contest, but could not give his first. "I've already given my word to some other bid," he said.What is serious for FIFA is that both men told undercover reporters that they had been offered cash to vote for other bidding nations.<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529153922101935042" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMqCqD_OCP7qSiroKLz9sLFA-N9MshcUBIVr3Vz2AUd4OOpY7tX__gdjATiI-joa0ylkL2x316bOZFTn__oHRG5GJyvVOXv5IrrffVxYiE3mGl3HculkfEvRcGgFmGXhJqD0AGiVMPRlyO/s400/fifa-tapes.jpg" style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 386px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" />The London Sunday Times, which published videos on its website, says Temarii wanted $2.3 million to fund a soccer academy in Auckland. The FIFA vice president also boasted that Oceania had been offered between $10 million and $12 million by supporters of two unnamed bidding countries. Adamu’s position looks particularly precarious as he asked the $800,000 for a personal football project to be channelled through a family company. Press Association Sport spoke to Adamu today but the Nigerian terminated the phone call when asked about the allegations. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaAnOoiBiiYy92eSwbqzDOK6__Kg1x-MQxg9rPOTNYI10l2bE_urMw3oqGfqKOa12zef-aGZs8507d5W4M5RPgADD2sSemhdBkIa5wAkUH0228sJBRxDQwuEBxrAUc6tlbOPf_s0hOG9KR/s1600/fifa-diakite.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529152318851787602" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaAnOoiBiiYy92eSwbqzDOK6__Kg1x-MQxg9rPOTNYI10l2bE_urMw3oqGfqKOa12zef-aGZs8507d5W4M5RPgADD2sSemhdBkIa5wAkUH0228sJBRxDQwuEBxrAUc6tlbOPf_s0hOG9KR/s400/fifa-diakite.jpg" style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 150px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 150px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>Reporters spoke to six senior FIFA officials, both past and present, who offered to work as fixers for England's World Cup bid. They all suggested paying huge bribes to FIFA executive committee members. Among potential fixers who met the reporters were two FIFA committee members. Amadou Diakite (pictured left), on the referees' committee, advised the reporters they should offer bribes of $1m and he would make the introductions In Paris, the other serving official offered himself for hire for up to £300,000. Slim Aloulou, chairman of the FIFA disputes resolution committee, told the reporters they should not pay "peanuts" suggesting bribing members 1 million pounds each member.An investigation by London's The Sunday Times also uncovered allegations that supporters of two countries competing to host the World Cup have offered up to £750,000 a vote for personal "projects". Former FIFA delegate Ahongalu Fusimalohi, who served for years as FIFA executive member for Oceania, warned that the failure of the England bid to offer such deals would be its downfall:Fusimalohi is reported to have said: ‘England have got every reason why they should host the World Cup but they don’t strike the deals. You’ve got 24 members making that decision. 'Globally, if you don’t come up with something - although it’s corrupt it’s only corrupt if you get caught - these people will go all over the world to get it at any price. It’s sad but it’s true.’

World Cup Votes For Sale

FIFA's "For the Good of the Game" and "whatever's in it for me" two senior committee members offered to sell the...

2:36 PM

Why Africa is Poor: the result of power-hungry dictators

Mills' hard-hitting book pulls no punches about Africa's condition. The first sentence of the introduction to his book, Why Africa is Poor: And What Africans Can Do About It, reads: “The main reason why Africa’s people are poor is because their leaders have made this choice.” This sentence is repeated in the middle of the book. It is repeated again at the end of Mills’s conclusions. Could this insistent message be plainer? Or will Africa just continue to ignore the lessons of international reform as it suits them? <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk7Atw3aj-Jn3TKQVo2cM5HVcoJ_haZs6FrS5i3MrKDXFToPjEFqjlKjNnvOmuKqwwyh5-HeAFXWMxl33L7Rtv8NAo0YHIxCEznf7lsP7DmYUQGZAjsSwtdbwLesg6qDI7eGuhgA2VpDUR/s1600/BOOK%20Why%20Africa%20is%20Poor(2).jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5521362221422259666" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk7Atw3aj-Jn3TKQVo2cM5HVcoJ_haZs6FrS5i3MrKDXFToPjEFqjlKjNnvOmuKqwwyh5-HeAFXWMxl33L7Rtv8NAo0YHIxCEznf7lsP7DmYUQGZAjsSwtdbwLesg6qDI7eGuhgA2VpDUR/s400/BOOK%2520Why%2520Africa%2520is%2520Poor(2).jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 250px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 382px" /></a>It reminds me of another book titled Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent. (published in 1990), written by Blaine Harden of the Washington Post. In it he made the following observation: There are countless reasons to despair for Africa. At the end of the 1980s, per capita income was lower than it was thirty years earlier. Seventy percent of the world’s poorest nations are in Africa. The region is slipping out of the Third World into its own bleak category: the Nth World. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8xrWeiHnfuLrqwwuMNSKzSjeqgPHdEE5kiaI_AZ_ZXjhe0m3VwMv5nXy2qouqvAem2OT0PIGWnFu8uylWzOfBCEzQeEMoEluWClSXY3PIOO2NdI6a1Cemf0ujfOAHPh80uc9N7NRKDJx0/s1600/Book+-+Africa+a+fragile+continent.jpg"></a>Africa is the most successful producer of babies in recorded history and the world’s least successful producer of food And, like Greg Mills, Harden blames Africa’s power-hungry dictators for the tragic state of affairs: As I travelled around Africa, it was the vulnerability of Africans to the depredations of their own leaders that — more than famines and wars and poverty — sickened me most. <blockquote>If you took a quarter-century worth of His Excellencies the African leader and tossed them in a blender, you would come up with a Big Man who looks like this: His face is on the money. His photograph hangs in every office in his realm. His ministers wear gold pins with tiny photographs of him on the lapels of their tailored pin-striped suits. He names streets, football stadiums, hospitals, and universities after himself. He carries a silver-inlaid ivory mace, or an ornately carved walking stick or a fly whisk or a chiefly stool. He insists on being called “Doctor” or “conqueror” or “teacher” or “the big elephant” or “the number-one peasant” or “the most popular leader in the world.” His every pronouncement is reported on the front page. He sleeps with the wives and daughters of powerful men in his government. He shuffles ministers without warning, paralyzing policy decisions as he undercuts pretenders to his throne. He scapegoats minorities to shore up popular support. He bans all political parties except the one he controls. He rigs elections. He emasculates the courts. He cows the press. He stifles academia. He goes to church.(p217, Blaine Harden, Africa – Dispatches from a Fragile Continent, 1993) </blockquote> Mills’s book should be required reading for every South African cabinet minister, senior (and upcoming) government official, business leader — for everyone interested in the development of what the Economist some years ago called the “hopeless continent”. Mills also discusses South Africa’s resistance to globalisation and generally Africa’s eagerness to attend the myriad international events to which its leaders are invited, instead of submitting strategic and detailed execution plans at these events. “Africa has the biggest voting bloc in the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other such organisations,” Mills notes. “But what does it ‘trade’ its vote for? Help for Cuba and the Palestinians, blocking UN managerial reform, and manoeuvring around tougher action on Burma and Iran. None of this does one bit for Africa or for Africans outside of the New York diplomats, who revel in such posturing, or those leaders overwrought by their own anti-colonial complexes. Africa is often the subject of these meetings, but its leaders generally miss the point. “As the collapse of the global trade talks in Geneva in 2008 showed, the WTO was perhaps the worst example. Led by South Africa, 40 African votes were locked together with China, India and Brazil, with the aim of resisting European and United States demands for the South American and South Asian giants to open their markets. “Fine for them, but those same countries had as high — or higher — tariffs on African goods as the EU and U.S. did. If African votes in support of their positions had been exchanged for commitment from those countries to provide duty- and quota-free status to Africa (a small price for them to pay given the limited share Africa would gain in their markets), this position would have made sense . Instead, Africa sold its votes for some form of ‘South-South’ solidarity, without any return to serve its own interests. India, China and Brazil must laugh all the way to Geneva for every WTO session.” For how much longer does Africa want to be known as the failed continent? Consider this comment in The Times (UK) by a former Conservative MP and influential columnist, Matthew Parris, responding to the constant squeals from African leaders that the West are trying to recolonise them: <blockquote>“Great powers aren’t interested in administering wild places any more, still less in settling them; just raping them. Black gangster governments sponsored by self-interested Asian or Western powers could become the central story in 21st-century African history. The continent is in many places run by outfits that resemble gangs rather than governments. You hardly need visit  … the gang’s territory … you simply give it support, munitions, bribes and protection to keep the roads and airports open and it pays you with access to resources. It is when China, then America, and perhaps even Russia or India follow, that the scramble for Africa will truly be resumed.” </blockquote><blockquote>Parris wrote that comment in April 2008.</blockquote> "Yet it is within the power of African governments to make more civilised arrangements. Why don’t they do it?" Surveying Africa’s record, Mills writes: “In a half-century of independence, Africa has not realised its potential. Instead, its greatest national assets have undermined its prosperity. Africa’s youth, far from being a huge source of talent and energy to be harnessed, are regarded as a destabilising force because they are largely unemployed and uneducated. The principal problem with African economics is politics, and the choices that leaders make in the interests of their short-term expediency of staying in power and ensuring control." Far from being the world's breadbasket, Africa's agriculture potential has similarly been squandered. Despite many African states possessing natural advantages, 35 of 48 sub-Saharan economies were net food importers at the end of the 2000s. Africa's share of world agricultural exports has halved since 1970, to under 4 percent. If Africa's dismal economic performance can be put down to bad choices by African leaders, then we have to ask: Why have they made them?" When African leaders read what further Mills has to say, they should squirm, because they know it applies to most of them: “Things are highly politicised in the small sense of the word — keeping matters in the party’s ambit, rather than true checks and balances on government.

Why Africa is Poor: the result of power-hungry dictators

Mills' hard-hitting book pulls no punches about Africa's condition. The first sentence of the introduction to his book, Why Africa i...

1:44 PM

Screw ABSA!

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6g5qdbhD6pAw0qSZwZ8VVwn784gYoSxjXhc1rFj4dyu4pO-auHWXycUTOYYcJqNS_E0iHbmgtiix_q0vXGLpmIH4SgxIcySw_QLxawsP8w7lmNLoNaPD61ttT8roM2G_1_6ubFWDhJYMg/s1600/AbSa.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5521265960875431074" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6g5qdbhD6pAw0qSZwZ8VVwn784gYoSxjXhc1rFj4dyu4pO-auHWXycUTOYYcJqNS_E0iHbmgtiix_q0vXGLpmIH4SgxIcySw_QLxawsP8w7lmNLoNaPD61ttT8roM2G_1_6ubFWDhJYMg/s400/AbSa.JPG" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 376px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 171px" /></a>ABSA sucks... Since when did OUR money become THEIR wealth? Not any more! My money is out of ABSA! I am from tomorrow an ex Absa Private bank client ....... Boycott ABSA and their affiliates, do not support anything ABSA is a sponsor of! Action this as something you HAVE to do, because if you don't this kind of thing will simply not stop! Today. Tomorrow. Never! Good riddance to pathetic service and ridiculous bank chargers "Dear Absa..." I am deeply concerned about the alleged discriminatory communications issued to Oregan Hoskins by my bank Absa. My money is obviously not good enough because of the colour of my skin and I have made the decision to move ALL of my accounts to another bank, a bank that puts all of its paying clients first. Absa uses our money to invest in sports like rugby and sponsor them and then have the cheek to shun and insult their white customers by demanding quicker transformation in rugby without addressing the real issues at hand. Since when does a bank adopt a political stance in sport and interfered to score cheap political points from the government? I guess maybe it’s because they want their business, unlimited funds is an attractive client, and the government seem to have endless reams of cash? Who knows? What I do know is Absa is a BANK, not a political bargaining tool. It is disgusting, and as a progressive thinking young person I am dismayed at Absa's poor foresight and lack of respect for its clients who are a mix of all races. I may not be your biggest client, but I do know that all your little clients added together make up your biggest client and a lot of them are dismayed with your attitude towards them. FOOD FOR THOUGHT: We are 15 years into the transformation process and it is not working in business and in sport because there is not enough quantitative investment by government and private companies at the grass roots level. When I talk about investment, it’s not just about throwing money into something. It’s about investing time, and commitment for the long haul. Young white kids like me grew up playing rugby; I was literally born with a rugby ball in my hands. You can’t just force black players into positions and by doing so ruin their careers, look at how many black players springbok careers have been destroyed because of transformation and coaches being forced to play players who just aren’t ready and haven’t had the correct sustained coaching and investment from a young age. Do you think players like Fourie Dupreez woke up one day, went to a two week rugby coaching academy and was “transformed” into the best scrumhalf in world rugby? No, he has practised for hundreds and hundreds of hours from the age of 5 and fought hard to be at the top. Rugby is a religion to many of us and we are born into it. Where are all the development clinics, and rugby facilities in poor areas? And I am not just talking about “fly by night” clinics and clubs that set themselves up to make a quick buck and then disappear with all of the investment capital in their pockets, I am talking about a professional sponsored model, similar to the Australian model that develops players at club level from a young age and is constantly monitored. What mechanisms are currently in place to monitor development? Transformation needs to start at the beginning and work its way up to the top, and not the reversal which is what you are suggesting. Those black players that you want to see playing first class rugby need to be developed from 6 years old, they can’t just be created when they are 18, totally inexperienced and thrown to the lions. No pun intended. So before blaming the unions and demanding certain transformation conditions for continued sponsorship, maybe it’s time to look at the causes of the symptoms that you are not happy with in SARU. Maybe it’s the sponsors that are putting their money in the wrong places and wanting the most exposure possible, so called bang for their bucks, after all nothing is free in this world. Spare a thought for those white kids too young to know what discrimination against blacks was. Imagine being told you’re good enough, but not black enough. Try to make sense of that from a liberal perspective, and what resentments are planted in that young impressionable mind where there were none to begin with? We forget sport is about winning. Sport has as much to do with politics, as Selebi has to do with scruples. We need the best players and coaches in order to win and remain competitive. And I am afraid to say being the best has nothing to do with the colour of your skin, it has to do with your abilities. If young black kids are not being developed properly it is not the fault of current white players selected on their abilities. These things take time, and as we can see we cannot force transformation from the top down. Today, tomorrow, together….. remember? Regards Wayne G Source: <a href="http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/YourStory/">http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/YourStory/</a>

Screw ABSA!

ABSA sucks... Since when did OUR money become THEIR wealth? Not any more! My money is out of ABSA! I am from tomorrow an ex Absa Private ban...

5:35 AM

South Africa P.I.G.

World Cup Votes For Sale

Why Africa is Poor: the result of power-hungry dictators

Screw ABSA!

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