Courtesy of Transparency In Sport Organisation.
Andrew Jennings
Hard Man Henry Kissinger will BOOT OUT Blatter.
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Andrew Jennings
Hard Man Henry Kissinger will BOOT OUT Blatter.
By Andrew Jennings
Sunday 5 June, 2011.
No more presents from Coke for Sepp
We’ve saved Coca-Cola!
Hard Man Henry Kissinger will boot out Blatter
By Andrew Jennings
Sunday June 5, 2011
When Sepp Blatter let slip last week that Henry Kissinger is heading for Zurich to sweep away the dirt at FIFA he surely knew that his bottom ain’t going to be warming the President’s throne for many more months. When Kissinger added, ‘There’s a need for modernisation,’ Blatter had to know the jig was up.
Kissinger said of Blatter, darkly, ‘I would certainly know how to communicate with him, and the results will be shown by the degree to which our recommendations are accepted.’
Here we go. The long-expected American power grab for world football, a sport too globally popular, too dripping in money to be left under the control of the third-rate clowns who’ve reduced it to a daily scandal show. They’ve asked for it – and they’re going to get it, bigtime.
PLANET WIDE LOATHING
Blatter will be pushed aside by his furious financiers, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Visa and the other global brands that pay for his presidential life style and the comforts that keep his dimwit members voting for him. Blatter has made himself the focus of planet-wide loathing and ridicule and Big Money has had enough. All sponsor’s contracts have break clauses for misbehaviour – just like Coca-Cola and Mr Rooney.
Forget the Kissinger who many accuse of war crimes after the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war. Put aside his Nobel Peace Prize for helping end the carnage that he helped create.
Remember only two things: That Kissinger’s secretive consultancy firm tightly controlled the so-called Olympic reform process in 1999 after the catastrophic sex-and-cash-for-votes scandal in Salt Lake City. And remember (are you listening Sepp?) that Kissinger worked on the failed American bid to stage the 2022 World Cup. He knows his country was shafted. Sepp, it’s personal.
BLATTER MUST BE DITCHED
When the sponsors – whoops, partners as we are instructed to call them - moved on the International Olympic Committee in 1999 because the Salt Lake scandal was damaging the event for which they paid so much, they let president Samaranch stay in power.
This was because the dirt wasn’t seen to stick to Samaranch personally – and the sponsors needed him under control, to steer the 2008 Games to Beijing, clients of Kissinger. That chapter of IOC scandals could be closed swiftly. There was no more dirt to come.
No such luck for Blatter. He’ll have to be ditched because in a few months the FIFA president’s personal involvement in the biggest corruption story in world sport will be revealed. That would be one in the jockstrap for the Partners. They are not going to tolerate any more pain.
IF THE LONDON HACKS covering the congress in Zurich last week hadn’t been so busy abusing the English and Scottish FA’s attempts to clean up FIFA they could have strolled to the nearest newsstand and bought a copy of the weekly Handelszeitung.
They might have noticed the prominent headline ‘Kickbacks: Fifa blocks release of documents’ and read the killer story. Killer for Blatter that is.
Reporter Jean-Francois Tanda revealed that FIFA had gone to court in the canton of Zug on May 24 in a desperate attempt to stop publication of the final report by Investigating Magistrate Thomas Hildbrand summing up his eight-year probe into the bribes trousered by FIFA’s top officials from the ISL marketing company. The report is sitting in the Zug prosecutor’s office. It won’t gather dust.
FIFA SUPPRESSING BRIBE REPORTS
Tanda featured in our BBC Panorama programme on Monday May 23, talking about FIFA’s expensive legal war to suppress the report.
Panorama goes to UEFA’s Paris congress in March. I get alongside Blatter, ask him, ‘Why are you blocking the publication of the investigation into FIFA? Why are you blocking? Why not make it public?’ As Blatter slithers away he snaps, ‘I am not going to speak now.’
You bet he isn’t going to speak about this, ever. A year ago the Zug prosecutor announced that three anonymous parties had paid millions to halt the investigation. The deal was that they could remain anonymous in return for confessing their guilt.
As I said in the programme, FIFA – of course that’s Blatter – had to admit to investigators that they knew all about the bribes – and had done nothing about it. You might wonder why. And standing on the dock on the Zugersee, framed by some very large mountains, I disclosed that the two anonymous FIFA officials who had admitted pocketing the bribes were former FIFA president Brazil’s Joao Havelange and his former son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira, a member of FIFA’s executive committee since 1994 and in charge of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
KIDNAPPING & BURGLARY
Investigating Magistrate Thomas Hildbrand
The BBC has joined with several Swiss media companies petitioning the Zug prosecutor for disclosure. We all want to know, who got the $100 million that passed under the table. We’ve seen some of the curious reasons The FIFA Three’s lawyers give for keeping the report secret. Their clients, would suffer ‘negative press coverage.’ Their reputations would be ‘damaged irreparably.’ They might even suffer ‘kidnapping, burglary or robbery.’
Tanda tells me that he expects the lawyers to block disclosure all the way to the Federal Court in Lausanne. The process could take a year, maybe more. But there is a crucial precedent case and the judges and lawyers have no doubt that the names will be revealed.
Coca-Cola won’t like that – so they are going to have to dispense with the services of Blatter and Teixeira, and a few more, before too long. Any squawking from The FIFA Three and the money tap will be turned off.
SPONSORS' MESSAGE TO SEPP
Emirates Up and Away
Look what the sponsors are saying in public. Adidas talk about ‘the negative tonality.’ Coca-Cola adds, ‘The current allegations are distressing and bad for the sport.’
Here’s McDonald's: “We expect that the current issues will be resolved in the best interest of the game." Emirates is ‘disappointed.’ For Visa, ‘The current situation is clearly not good for the game and we ask that FIFA take all necessary steps to resolve the concerns.’
And Budweiser? ‘It is our expectation that FIFA will address and resolve this situation in an expedient manner.’ Castrol chip in, ‘We are watching the current situation very closely and expect FIFA to resolve these issues in a right and proper manner.’ You have to know that in private the phones are melting in multi-lingual expletives.
Castrol Leaving Town
Budweiser..Truckin Out!
PRIVATE MONEY - SOAKED MEETING
SO WHAT WILL Henry Kissinger do to FIFA? I have a hunch because back in 1999 I watched how he managed the IOC ‘reform’ process on behalf of the Partners. It helped that a source was slipping me the IOC’s confidential internal reports.
The parallels are eerie. The FIFA scandal erupted 10 days ago with the disclosure of Trinidad’s Jack Warner hosting, with Qatar’s presidential candidate Mohamed Bin Hammam, a private, money-soaked meeting of the Caribbean Football Association.
In late 1998 the IOC was hit by revelations of bribes gleefully accepted by some of their members from the winter Games bidders from Salt Lake City in Utah. Within days the IOC sponsors went crazy – in private. An IOC board meeting was told, ‘Privately (the sponsors) have made it very clear to the IOC that if the crisis is allowed to drag on and the IOC is seen not to have addressed the issues at hand, the consequences could be fatal to their Olympic partnership.’
What’s to do? Panic. Surrender to the muscle.
BLACK OPS PEOPLE
The IOC called Kissinger. Why? He lists Coca-Cola as a client. Since leaving public service, Kissinger had traded his international celebrity and political connections for cash in the corporate world. His Kissinger Associates is the ultimate influence broker between corporations and governments across the globe.
When Blatter spoke last week of his promised ‘Commission of the Wise” I knew the New York PR men were already writing his script. Yes, there will Johan Cruyff and more utterly likeable ingénues. And the Black Ops people.
The IOC was advised to appoint spindoctors Hill & Knowlton. The IOC Marketing director was despatched to New York to seek their advice. Later, behind closed doors, he told the board that they'd been ‘under pressure from all their business partners.’
The stage-managing began. Kissinger played a key role setting up the grand-sounding ‘Reform Commission 2000’ to remake the Olympic Committee in the image the Partners wanted.
There were the bosses of several companies including Fiat, Xerox and Swatch. (Coke and the mainline Partners didn’t need to be there. Henry was on the Commission, looking after them.) There were some mistakes in the choice of IOC members. Volleyball’s Ruben Acosta resigned suddenly from the IOC five years later – and despite the rumours we never really knew why.
Henry Kissinger I'll Eat Blatter For Breakfast
We do know why Bulgaria’s Ivan Slavkov had to go. A BBC Panorama programme caught him in 2004 with his hand out for bribes. Lord Seb Coe leant a helping hand to the Commission, and of course there was Blatter, appointed the previous year as new head organiser of Zurich Local 666 of the International Corruption Cartel and his mentor João Havelange.
That all happened in the early Spring of 1999. I attended many tedious press conferences through the year as the IOC members wrestled with high-falutin’ moral topics – and some cosmetic constitutional changes. In December the IOC reforms document was handed round. What had Kissinger been doing? At the press conference I asked him about a crucial point; was the IOC going to continue selecting its members?
Kissinger replied, ‘I haven’t read it carefully.’
BLOOD ON THE PITCH
THE IOC HAD to ‘let go’ a few grasping members. But the rest were pretty much united, chanting the mantra of Olympic idealism. It’s not the same at FIFA. There’s a determined land grab going on spearheaded from New York by Chuck Blazer and backed up by the Partners. It’s war.
There’ll be blood on the pitch. Two other executive committee members are said to have been present in Trinidad. At this rate their ruling committee may soon be inquorate. Ex-FBI boss Louis Freeh has been hired to investigate since the day the Warner-Bin Hammam dollar fest was blown out. Mr Freeh made his name taking down Mobsters in New York. FIFA should give him a free hand to take down what increasingly appears to be an organised crime family at the heart of world football.
That’s good. Except that Chuck Blazer who launched the attack on Warner, is now being heralded as the ‘Mr Clean’ of FIFA. Is this the same official who for 20 years failed to be bothered by Jack Warner’s rapacious activities?
WHERE DOES it all end? We found out in February 2006 when IOC President Jaques Rogge, sliced, diced and reconstituted by the Partners, made an historic announcement at a McDonalds burgers ‘Balanced lifestyles’ press conference on the eve of the Torino winter games. ‘McDonald’s has supported the Olympic Movement for more than 30 years now, and we share many of the same ideals,’ said Rogge without looking at his cue card. So much for the war against obesity.
Rogge has a further task to perform for the Partners. As part of the clear-out at FIFA, his Ethics Commission has to hurry up with their investigation of dual membership officials involved in the ISL bribes scandal.
Jack Warner (PROVISIONALLY SUSPENDED)
Mohamed Bin Hammam (PROVISIONALLY SUSPENDED)
Courtesy of FIFA.com
FIFA Executive Committee
The Executive Committee consists of a President, elected by the Congress in the year following a FIFA World Cup™, eight vice-presidents and 15 members, appointed by the confederations and associations. It meets at least twice a year, with the mandate for each member lasting four years, and its role includes determining the dates, locations and format of tournaments, appointing FIFA delegates to the IFAB and electing and dismissing the General Secretary on the proposal of the FIFA President. (Art. 30 and 31 of the Statutes).
| President | |||
| Joseph S BLATTER |  Switzerland | ||
| Senior Vice President | |||
| Julio H. GRONDONA |  Argentina | ||
| Vice President | |||
| Issa HAYATOU |  Cameroon | ||
| Jack A. WARNER (Provisionally suspended) |  Trinidad and Tobago | ||
| Ángel María VILLAR LLONA |  Spain | ||
| Michel PLATINI |  France | ||
| David CHUNG |  Papua New Guinea | ||
| H.R.H Prince Ali BIN AL HUSSEIN |  Jordan | ||
| Jim BOYCE |  Northern Ireland | ||
| Member | |||
| Michel D'HOOGHE |  Belgium | ||
| Ricardo Terra TEIXEIRA |  Brazil | ||
| Mohamed BIN HAMMAM (Provisionally suspended) |  Qatar | ||
| Senes ERZIK |  Turkey | ||
| Chuck BLAZER |  USA | ||
| Worawi MAKUDI |  Thailand | ||
| Nicolás LEOZ |  Paraguay | ||
| Marios LEFKARITIS |  Cyprus | ||
| Jacques ANOUMA |  Côte d'Ivoire | ||
| Rafael SALGUERO |  Guatemala | ||
| Hany ABO RIDA |  Egypt | ||
| Vitaly MUTKO |  Russia | ||
| Mohamed RAOURAOUA |  Algeria | ||
| V. Manilal FERNANDO |  Sri Lanka | ||
| Theo ZWANZIGER |  Germany | ||
| Secretary General | |||
| Jérôme VALCKE | France | ||
TOSS THE BUMS OUT!
Africa’s Issa Hayatou, Blatter and Havelange were named by BBC Panorama last November in the programme that the English FA and the FIFA toadies insulted as ‘unpatriotic.’ Hopefully they’ve learned their lesson – and so has the IOC. Do your duty Jacques – toss the bums out. Henry Kissinger and the Partners will require nothing less.
The voters who clung to Sepp will find themselves national and international jokes; 186 discredited officials, some twits, some venal thugs. They voted for corruption, shafted their own fans, pocketed their FIFA expenses for the Zurich trip, deluded that they would be listened to by the Blatter henchmen.
Scotland and England may yet emerge as homes of the brave football officials who withstood the onslaught of despicable FIFA dupes – and from too much of their own media.
Sunday Herald, June 5, 2011
Kiaora. As much as I admire and respect the decades of Richard Jennings amazing Journalistic career, BUT I believe that there is HOPE - FOR THE WORLD TO COME TOGETHER IN MUTUAL RESPECT FOR EACH OTHER'S CULTURES AND FIFA AND FOOTBALL IS THE 'VEHICLE' TO DELIVER THAT AND ALSO IT IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GAME TO GRACE OUR GLOBAL ESTATE IT IS THE CATALYST and as 
Mahatma Gandhi, Courtesy of FIFAcom football legend,... stories of Gandhi’s years in South Africa that have been passed on from generation to generation in the areas around Durban where he spent much of those early years. As FIFA World talked to community leaders and social historians there, a picture emerged of a young man who was both passionate about football himself and – more importantly – well aware of the passions it stirred in others.
Mahatma Gandhi, Courtesy of FIFAcom football legend,... stories of Gandhi’s years in South Africa that have been passed on from generation to generation in the areas around Durban where he spent much of those early years. As FIFA World talked to community leaders and social historians there, a picture emerged of a young man who was both passionate about football himself and – more importantly – well aware of the passions it stirred in others. Before finding fame as the driving force of India’s independence struggle, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi began his working life as a young lawyer in South Africa, the same initial career path which Mandela would also later embark upon. Just like Mandela, though some 60 years earlier, Gandhi was soon distracted from his profession by his growing disgust at the country’s laws of racial segregation. Motivated in particular by the daily discrimination suffered by South Africa’s large Indian population, the young Gandhi began formulating the philosophy of non-violent resistance which he would later perfect in India, while also striving to improve the social conditions of his fellow Indians.
Surprisingly perhaps, one of the main tools which he used to spread his ideas in those early days was football. “Gandhi already knew football well from the time he spent in England completing his law studies,” explains Bongani Sithole, official guide at the Phoenix settlement which Gandhi established in the town of Inanda near Durban at the dawn of the last century. "He was never a serious player himself, but seems to have taken the game to heart, above even his first loves of cricket and cycling – perhaps because at the time football was the favourite sport of the less-affluent classes. In South Africa, he must have quickly realised that the game’s popularity among the country’s disadvantaged communities made it a particularly effective means of reaching the people whose political sensibilities Gandhi most wanted to arouse.”
"What fascinated Gandhi in particular was the notion he had of football’s nobility. At that time, the idea of team play was much stronger than the idea of individual ‘star’ players, and this is something that greatly appealed to him".
Poobalan Govindasamy, president of the South African Indoor Football Association, stated.
Passive kickers Football then played a major part in Gandhi’s next step of taking the principles of satyagraha to the masses. As a regular spectator at football matches, Gandhi had observed the popular appeal of the emerging sport among the less-privileged classes in South African society, and decided to use his own passion for the sport as a tool to raise people’s awareness of the need to take non-violent action to achieve equal rights and integration in a society that considered them second-class citizens.
As the undisputed leader of non-violent resistance to the apartheid regime of the time, Gandhi helped establish three football clubs at the beginning of the last century, in Durban, Pretoria and Johannesburg (where he moved at the end of 1904), all of which were given the same name: Passive Resisters Soccer Club. Sadly, there is no evidence proving that Gandhi ever turned out himself for any of the teams or took on any coaching roles, but photos unearthed at Durban’s Old Court House Museum do show him posing alongside team players and even delivering speeches to crowds at the pitchside.
Those images back up oral histories which tell of Gandhi talking to the teams at half-time about the principles of nonviolent resistance, and using the gatherings to distribute pamphlets to specators addressing the harmful effects of racial segregation on society. “The Resisters were not integrated into any kind of league structure,” says Rebecca Naidoo, a great granddaughter of Gandhi’s long-time collaborator G.R. Naidoo who has spent many years contributing to research on Gandhi’s South African years as a documentalist at the Court House Museum.
“Back then, football was still in its infancy of course and in many parts of the world, including South Africa, there was still no big interest in fixed leagues or competitions. Instead, they would just play friendly games in different fields. At first, Gandhi appears to have been simply seduced by the essence of the sport itself. It was only later that he realised that it could also be useful for his political ends.” Match venues included the Phoenix settlement, which is now preserved as a heritage site where the flat playing field set up by Gandhi can still be seen to this day, and at the Tolstoy farm in Johannesburg, named after Gandhi’s Russian mentor who had by now begun a correspondence with Gandhi that would last up until the writer’s death in 1910.
Such games helped fund the families of “resisters” who had been imprisoned for their non-violent struggle against local racist laws. Records tell of one such match being played in Johannesburg in 1910 between the local Passive Resisters team and their Pretoria counterparts to protest against the unjust jailing of about one hundred “comrades” over their opposition to segregationist laws.
Fair-play pioneer
As well as being a pioneer in the use of sport to achieve political goals, Gandhi also appears to have been ahead of his time in using football to promote self-improvement and social cohesion. According to Poobalan Govindasamy, president of the South African Indoor Football Association, Gandhi was convinced that football had enormous potential to encourage team work, and therefore when he established the Passive Resisters he focused on promoting moral values such as team spirit and fair play.
“What fascinated Gandhi in particular was the notion he had of football’s nobility,” says Govindasamy. “At that time, the idea of team play was much stronger than the idea of individual ‘star’ players, and this is something that greatly appealed to him. He believed the game had an enormous potential to promote team work. Certainly he appreciated the game’s usefulness in attracting large crowds, but it would be a mistake to think that football was only a communications platform for Gandhi. It was, I believe, much more. It was one of his great personal passions and one of the ways in which he was able to find spiritual peace.”
While he could not himself have imagined it during those days of promoting informal matches on the dusty fields of South Africa’s townships, Gandhi also left a real sporting legacy in the country as well as the more obvious social one. “His organisational skills and drive helped to lay the foundations for the non-racial sporting structures of today’s South Africa,” says Govindasamy, “because it was Gandhi and his contemporaries who did more than anyone else at the time to involve non-whites, and particularly the country’s Indian population, in structured sporting activities.”
This began with small provincial leagues and local federations such as the Transvaal Indian Football Association or the Klip River District Indian Football Association. Then, in 1903, and again with Gandhi’s support, came the founding of the South African Association of Hindu Football. “This was all still a long way off from the unified country ideal of today’s Rainbow Nation of course,” acknowledges Govindasamy, “but it at least paved the way for the later creation of a national federation and leagues in which games could be played regardless of the players’ skin colours.”
Football’s loss, India’s gain By 1914, Gandhi’s reputation as a skilled orator, philosopher and activist had spread far beyond South Africa and he was persuaded to return home to India by a sector of the Hindu middle class who wanted him to apply his talents to the struggle for an independent homeland. As he refocused his attention on a new challenge, and as new leaders emerged to continue the fight against South Africa’s social inequalities, the Passive Resisters football teams disbanded, to be kept alive only in oral histories, faded photographs and a few tattered documents.
Gandhi’s work was taken up by others, however, both in the fight against apartheid and in the related drive for non-discriminatory sports teams and organisations. As Reb Naidoo points out, two of the most prominent football teams in South Africa’s more recent sporting history may never have existed were it not for Gandhi’s efforts, with the now-defunct Johannesburg club Moonlighters FC and former Durban side Manning Rangers both emerging from the fledgling Indian football community that had been nurtured by Gandhi and his colleagues.
Manning Rangers, founded by G.R. Naidoo in 1928, even went on to become the first champions of South Africa’s new Premier Soccer League in 1997. The club subsequently ran into financial diffi culties and has since been relocated to Cape Town, where it plays in the country’s National First Division under the new name of Ikapa Sporting FC, but it is nevertheless fitting that the first league champions of the new united South Africa came from a team who could trace their roots all the way back to the little-known strivings of the great Gandhi some one hundred years earlier
A Message from an Ancestor of mine to his 'MOKOPUNA' (Grandchildren) and to ALL YOUTH...
Sir Apirana Turupa Ngata.
He Mihi ki nga tamariki me nga taitama raua ko nga kotiro KATOA O AOTEAROA...No toku Koroua Tipuna a Ta Apirana Ngata he tito tenei...
E tipu, e rea,
Mō ngā ra o tōu ao;
Ko tō ringa ki ngā rākau a te Pāhekā
Hei ara mō tō tinana,
Ko tō ngākau ki ngā taonga a ā tīpuna Māori
Hei tikitiki mō tō māhuna,
Ā, ko tō wairua ki tō Atua,
Nāna nei ngā mea katoa.
Na, Siena.
Grow up oh tender shoot,
and thrive for the days destined to you.
Your hands to utilise the tools of the Pakeha to provide physical sustenance.
Your heart to the treasures of your ancestors as a diadem for your brow.
Your soul to God to whom all things belong.
I do hope that the unpleasantness that has shrouded the world governing body in recent weeks will be brought to a conclusion in an expeditious and fair manner.
I will not however, apologise for the fact that I do support the re-elected FIFA President Sepp Blatter..He is 'GOOD FOR NEW ZEALAND FOOTBALL' and Mohamed Bin Hammam, most definitely was 'NOT GOOD FOR NEW ZEALAND FOOTBALL'.
Hei kona (Take care).
XX Me ;)
As the undisputed leader of non-violent resistance to the apartheid regime of the time, Gandhi helped establish three football clubs at the beginning of the last century, in Durban, Pretoria and Johannesburg (where he moved at the end of 1904), all of which were given the same name: Passive Resisters Soccer Club. Sadly, there is no evidence proving that Gandhi ever turned out himself for any of the teams or took on any coaching roles, but photos unearthed at Durban’s Old Court House Museum do show him posing alongside team players and even delivering speeches to crowds at the pitchside.
Those images back up oral histories which tell of Gandhi talking to the teams at half-time about the principles of nonviolent resistance, and using the gatherings to distribute pamphlets to specators addressing the harmful effects of racial segregation on society. “The Resisters were not integrated into any kind of league structure,” says Rebecca Naidoo, a great granddaughter of Gandhi’s long-time collaborator G.R. Naidoo who has spent many years contributing to research on Gandhi’s South African years as a documentalist at the Court House Museum.
“Back then, football was still in its infancy of course and in many parts of the world, including South Africa, there was still no big interest in fixed leagues or competitions. Instead, they would just play friendly games in different fields. At first, Gandhi appears to have been simply seduced by the essence of the sport itself. It was only later that he realised that it could also be useful for his political ends.” Match venues included the Phoenix settlement, which is now preserved as a heritage site where the flat playing field set up by Gandhi can still be seen to this day, and at the Tolstoy farm in Johannesburg, named after Gandhi’s Russian mentor who had by now begun a correspondence with Gandhi that would last up until the writer’s death in 1910.
Such games helped fund the families of “resisters” who had been imprisoned for their non-violent struggle against local racist laws. Records tell of one such match being played in Johannesburg in 1910 between the local Passive Resisters team and their Pretoria counterparts to protest against the unjust jailing of about one hundred “comrades” over their opposition to segregationist laws.
Fair-play pioneer
As well as being a pioneer in the use of sport to achieve political goals, Gandhi also appears to have been ahead of his time in using football to promote self-improvement and social cohesion. According to Poobalan Govindasamy, president of the South African Indoor Football Association, Gandhi was convinced that football had enormous potential to encourage team work, and therefore when he established the Passive Resisters he focused on promoting moral values such as team spirit and fair play.
“What fascinated Gandhi in particular was the notion he had of football’s nobility,” says Govindasamy. “At that time, the idea of team play was much stronger than the idea of individual ‘star’ players, and this is something that greatly appealed to him. He believed the game had an enormous potential to promote team work. Certainly he appreciated the game’s usefulness in attracting large crowds, but it would be a mistake to think that football was only a communications platform for Gandhi. It was, I believe, much more. It was one of his great personal passions and one of the ways in which he was able to find spiritual peace.”
While he could not himself have imagined it during those days of promoting informal matches on the dusty fields of South Africa’s townships, Gandhi also left a real sporting legacy in the country as well as the more obvious social one. “His organisational skills and drive helped to lay the foundations for the non-racial sporting structures of today’s South Africa,” says Govindasamy, “because it was Gandhi and his contemporaries who did more than anyone else at the time to involve non-whites, and particularly the country’s Indian population, in structured sporting activities.”
This began with small provincial leagues and local federations such as the Transvaal Indian Football Association or the Klip River District Indian Football Association. Then, in 1903, and again with Gandhi’s support, came the founding of the South African Association of Hindu Football. “This was all still a long way off from the unified country ideal of today’s Rainbow Nation of course,” acknowledges Govindasamy, “but it at least paved the way for the later creation of a national federation and leagues in which games could be played regardless of the players’ skin colours.”
Football’s loss, India’s gain By 1914, Gandhi’s reputation as a skilled orator, philosopher and activist had spread far beyond South Africa and he was persuaded to return home to India by a sector of the Hindu middle class who wanted him to apply his talents to the struggle for an independent homeland. As he refocused his attention on a new challenge, and as new leaders emerged to continue the fight against South Africa’s social inequalities, the Passive Resisters football teams disbanded, to be kept alive only in oral histories, faded photographs and a few tattered documents.
Gandhi’s work was taken up by others, however, both in the fight against apartheid and in the related drive for non-discriminatory sports teams and organisations. As Reb Naidoo points out, two of the most prominent football teams in South Africa’s more recent sporting history may never have existed were it not for Gandhi’s efforts, with the now-defunct Johannesburg club Moonlighters FC and former Durban side Manning Rangers both emerging from the fledgling Indian football community that had been nurtured by Gandhi and his colleagues.
Manning Rangers, founded by G.R. Naidoo in 1928, even went on to become the first champions of South Africa’s new Premier Soccer League in 1997. The club subsequently ran into financial diffi culties and has since been relocated to Cape Town, where it plays in the country’s National First Division under the new name of Ikapa Sporting FC, but it is nevertheless fitting that the first league champions of the new united South Africa came from a team who could trace their roots all the way back to the little-known strivings of the great Gandhi some one hundred years earlier
A Message from an Ancestor of mine to his 'MOKOPUNA' (Grandchildren) and to ALL YOUTH...
Sir Apirana Turupa Ngata.
He Mihi ki nga tamariki me nga taitama raua ko nga kotiro KATOA O AOTEAROA...No toku Koroua Tipuna a Ta Apirana Ngata he tito tenei...
E tipu, e rea,
Mō ngā ra o tōu ao;
Ko tō ringa ki ngā rākau a te Pāhekā
Hei ara mō tō tinana,
Ko tō ngākau ki ngā taonga a ā tīpuna Māori
Hei tikitiki mō tō māhuna,
Ā, ko tō wairua ki tō Atua,
Nāna nei ngā mea katoa.
Na, Siena.
Grow up oh tender shoot,
and thrive for the days destined to you.
Your hands to utilise the tools of the Pakeha to provide physical sustenance.
Your heart to the treasures of your ancestors as a diadem for your brow.
Your soul to God to whom all things belong.
I do hope that the unpleasantness that has shrouded the world governing body in recent weeks will be brought to a conclusion in an expeditious and fair manner.
I will not however, apologise for the fact that I do support the re-elected FIFA President Sepp Blatter..He is 'GOOD FOR NEW ZEALAND FOOTBALL' and Mohamed Bin Hammam, most definitely was 'NOT GOOD FOR NEW ZEALAND FOOTBALL'.
Hei kona (Take care).
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