Whiff of corruption, again

Money makes the world go round, they say.

But money, also the "root of all evil", is causing two greedy blokes at Safa - so we are told - to connive against their own country for the sake of fatter bank accounts.

What am I going on about?

Yesterday sister publication the Sowetan splashed with the headline: Mbalula probes Bafana TV scam.

Added was the subheadline: Safa officials fingered in a R5-million deal.

It certainly caught my attention.

"SportFive had inflated the broadcasting rights cost from R3-million to R5-million as a result of demands by two high-ranking South African Football Association officials," Sowetan scribe Ramatsiyi Moholoa revealed.

These officials must be exposed so the nation can see them for the supreme lowlifes they are.

Clearly they don't inflate the price so that they can take their share and donate it to the Salvation Army or to charity. They are taking the moolah for themselves.

If this is proved to be true, it will be a big blow to Kirsten Nematandani and his Football Transformation Forum folk who took power on the ticket of clean administration.

This is not a complicated matter.

It does not need a long-winded, drawn-out investigation.

If it is the credible, reputable company it purports to be, SportFive should disclose how much it paid into whose account, when, where and why.

If South Africans were screwed by two stooges from Safa, and those names are known to the ministry, Sport and Recreation Minister Fikile Mbalula must tell Nematandani.

Nematandani must suspend the suspects, who, of course, remain innocent until proven otherwise.

Name, shame and hang them out of the sport.

The same treatment was meted out to the late Stix Morewa when his fingers were found in the cookie jar.

The two stooges should not be spared.

Nematandani has spoken a lot about good governance and clean administration.

This is an opportunity for him to show South Africans how zero are his levels of tolerance for corruption.

This is an opportune time for Nematandani to lead, for him to stand up and be counted. Does he have the gonads to do it?

I doubt it, judging by his response to the report.

Instead of stating that Safa takes the allegations seriously and will leave no stone unturned investigating the allegations, he told the Sowetan: "Whoever started these allegations is malicious and wanted to damage the association's image."

Sport administration has proved itself to be far from being as clean as a whistle.

We saw that with the Athletics South Africa soap opera, where overpaid secretaries were licking their boss's fingers KFC-style during former president Leonard Chuene's (mal)administration.

We have seen how the bonus scandal has drowned Cricket South Africa's name in the pooh, but the men on the high table of the "gentleman's game" have bizarrely chosen to rally around beleaguered CEO Gerald Majola and subject the sport to live with a stain and stench of skulduggery and, by extension, suspicion of corruption.