S.Africa admits paying $10 mn but denies FIFA bribe

Yahoo – AFP, Agnes Pedrero, 31 May 2015

FIFA president Sepp Blatter on May 30, 2015 in Zurich after being 

re-elected (AFP Photo/Fabrice Coffrini)

Geneva (AFP) - South Africa admitted Sunday that it paid $10 million in 2008 but denied it was in any way a bribe to FIFA for the 2010 World Cup, in the latest twist to the massive corruption scandal engulfing world football's governing body.

Two separate investigations are being carried out by American and Swiss authorities for alleged rampant and long-running corruption within FIFA, with several top officials arrested and accused by US investigators of taking tens of millions of dollars in bribes.

Several top football officials have been questioned by Swiss investigators, Bern said, and FIFA's president Sepp Blatter too could be quizzed "in the future if needed", according to Swiss prosecutors.

The biggest scandal to rock world football erupted Wednesday when seven FIFA officials were arrested in their Zurich hotel as part of the US probe.

They and seven others were charged for racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies that ran from 1991 to present day, and accused of taking or conspiring to solicit for $150 million in bribes.

An example cited in US papers was the 2004 selection process for the 2010 World Cup, with investigators claiming that South African officials paid $10 million to former FIFA vice president Jack Warner -- one of the 14 indicted -- in order to secure the bid.

South African Football Association president Danny Jordaan, pictured on

 May 28, 2015, confirmed that the World Cup organising committee paid 

$10 million in 2008, after South Africa won the bid in May 2004 but

insisted this was not a bribe (AFP Photo)

South African Football Association president Danny Jordaan confirmed on Sunday that the organising committee made a payment of $10 million in 2008 but insisted this was not a bribe.

"I haven't paid a bribe or taken a bribe from anybody in my life. We don't know who is mentioned there (in the indictment)," Jordaan told the Sunday Independent.

"How could we have paid a bribe for votes four years after we had won the bid?" Jordaan said, adding that the payment was South Africa's contribution towards Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football's (CONCACAF) football development fund.

Warner was then also president of CONCACAF.

'Out of touch'

Swiss authorities were meanwhile running a parallel probe into allegations of bribery in the process over the controversial awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar.

The Swiss justice spokesman said the top football officials were interviewed as "people who could provide information", without giving further details.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter (L) shakes hands with UEFA President

 Michel Platini after being re-elected, in Zurich on May 29, 2015 (AFP Photo/

Michael Buholzer)

He added that Blatter "will not be questioned at this stage. If necessary, he will be in the future".

Seven senior FIFA officials are believed to be among those heard by investigators -- Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Issa Hayatou (Cameroon), Angel Miguel Villar Llona (Spain), Michel D'Hooge (Belgium), Senes Erzik (Turkey), Marios Lefkaritis (Cyprus), Hany Abo Rida (Egypt) and Vitaly Mutko (Russia).

Two other current members of the Executive Committee who voted in 2010 for Qatar and Russia live in Switzerland -- Blatter and UEFA president Michel Platini.

Swiss investigators were believed to be prioritising those living abroad as they were in town for a FIFA meeting on Saturday.

Blatter, who was re-elected to a fifth term as FIFA president on Friday despite the worst scandal to hit the organisation, has accused US investigators of using the arrests as an attempt "interfere with the congress" that returned him to power.

The 79-year-old Swiss has argued that while many hold him "ultimately responsible for actions and reputation of the global football community", he "cannot monitor everyone all of the time".

In an interview published Sunday by Swiss tabloid SonntagsBlick, Blatter said he "has been treated with zero respect" in the last few days.

He also said he was "very disappointed" by Platini, who has openly asked him to step down from the top job.

Platini has said UEFA will review relations with FIFA on June 6 while English Football Association chief Greg Dyke indicated England could be ready to back a European boycott of the World Cup.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier insisted FIFA must make a new start following Blatter's re-election and said football's governing body was out of touch with the sport it serves.

"I have serious doubts that FIFA will be able to handle this massive task without making a serious new start," he told German daily Die Welt on Sunday.

"The gap between the machinations of their officials and the many players, coaches, parents, referees and fans around the world, who with a lot of passion, ensure every week that football lives, could not be greater."

Barclays has launched an internal review into whether its accounts were used 

for corrupt payments by FIFA officials, a banking source told AFP on May 31,

2015 (AFP Photo/Carl Court)

In underlining the far-reaching nature of the scandal, British bank Barclays announced it had launched an internal review into whether its accounts were used for corrupt payments by FIFA officials, a banking source told AFP.

Barclays was among three banks with British headquarters named in the US indictment, which outlined how tens of millions of dollars were hidden in offshore accounts.

Another, Standard Chartered, said Friday that it was looking into two payments cleared by the bank that were mentioned in the indictment.

The third named bank, HSBC, has so far declined to comment.

Britain's Serious Fraud Office said Friday that it "continues actively to assess material in its possession and has made plain that it stands ready to assist ongoing international criminal investigations".

'Poo protest' topples British imperialist in South Africa

Yahoo – AFP, Lawrence Bartlett, 29 March 2015

A statue of British coloniser Cecil John Rhodes is covered in plastic bags as

 part of a protest by students and staff of the University of Cape Town (UCT)

on March 20, 2015 (AFP Photo/Rodger Bosch)

Cape Town (AFP) - A bucketload of human excrement flung at a statue has toppled a symbol of British imperialism in South Africa, marking the emergence of a new generation of black protest against white oppression.

The senate of the University of Cape Town (UCT) on Friday bowed to student demands that a brooding bronze statue of colonialist Cecil John Rhodes should be removed from the campus.

UCT, the oldest university in South Africa and regularly ranked as the best on the continent, was built on land donated by Rhodes, a mining magnate who died in 1902.

A statue of British coloniser Cecil John

Rhodes is covered in plastic bags as part

of a protest by students and staff of the

University of Cape Town (UCT) on 

March 20, 2015 (AFP Photo/Rodger Bosch)

Many of the students involved in the protests never lived under the injustices of white minority rule, but say they still experience racial discrimination 21 years after the end of apartheid.

The large statue of a notoriously racist Rhodes gazing across an Africa that he coveted for the British empire made them feel alienated on a campus still dominated by white staff, they said.

The "poo protest" was launched by a small group of students earlier this month, sparking a series of demonstrations demanding that the statue be torn down.

On Friday, the university senate voted 181 to one to remove the statue permanently from the campus, after vice-chancellor Max Price acknowledged "the many injustices of colonial conquest enacted under Rhodes' watch".

While the university council still has to endorse the move at a special meeting on April 8, the statue will be boarded up until it is handed over to government heritage authorities, university spokeswoman Pat Lucas said.

"It is certainly a victory for us," said student representative council president Ramabina Mahapa.

"It means we are being heard by the larger community."

A divisive history

But the disappearance of Rhodes is unlikely to end the debate on racial transformation launched by the protest, which gave rise to similar demands for change at two other universities.

In the east coast city of Durban, students at the University of KwaZulu Natal splattered white paint and anti-racism slogans on a statue of Britain's King George V.

Students and staff of the University of

Cape Town (UCT) protest against the

statue of British coloniser Cecil John

Rhodes at the university in Cape Town

on March 20, 2015 (AFP Photo/Rodger

Bosch)

And at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape, activists want the institution to be renamed.

The protests have also sparked lively debate among academics, historians, politicians and writers of letters to newspapers.

Much of the debate has been surprisingly calm and thoughtful in a country with such a divisive history, but a bitter edge of racism lurks beneath the surface in Nelson Mandela's "Rainbow Nation".

One white letter writer probably spoke for many when he suggested in the Cape Times that the student who threw the excrement at Rhodes should leave UCT and attend a university established by "his own ancestors".

But students have dismissed the argument that Rhodes should be honoured for donating land for the campus, saying he stole it from black Africans in the first place.

The discontent goes beyond symbols to cover admission policies and the racial make-up of the teaching staff.

Eusebius McKaiser, an author and commentator who attended Rhodes University and won a prestigious international Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, summed it up in an opinion piece in the New York Times.

"South African universities remain a testament to the country's colonial heritage in terms of what they teach, who does the teaching, and the morally odious symbols that haunt our campuses or lurk in their very names.

Students and staff of the University of 

Cape Town (UCT) shout slogans during

 a protest against the statue of British 

coloniser Cecil John Rhodes at the 

university in Cape Town on March 20, 

2015 (AFP Photo/Rodger Bosch)

"At Rhodes, 83 percent of senior management staff remain white and 77 percent of 'professionally qualified staff,' a category that includes academic teaching staff, are white," he said.

Mandela legacy

Whites make up about eight percent of South Africa's population of some 54 million.

McKaiser, who is of mixed race, defended the fact that he accepted a Rhodes scholarship, telling a radio interviewer that in moral terms the colonialist's money belonged to "the millions of black South Africans whose rights were trampled on".

He took the scholarship to Oxford "so that I could come back and show the middle finger to his legacy," McKaiser said.

Since the end of apartheid the names of some cities and streets deemed offensive have been changed, but monuments to South Africa's racist white-minority rule remain scattered throughout the country.

Much of that can be attributed to the racial reconciliation policies of liberation hero Nelson Mandela, who became the country's first democratically-elected president in 1994.

Another former Rhodes scholar, Shaun Johnson, wrote in South Africa's Times newspaper of his surprise when Mandela agreed in 2002 to have his name coupled with that of Rhodes in a new charitable organisation.

The Mandela Rhodes Foundation, of which Johnson is now executive director, provides post-graduate scholarships to young Africans.

Students and staff of the University of Cape Town (UCT) march on campus 

during a protest against the statue of British coloniser Cecil John Rhodes at

the university in Cape Town on March 20, 2015 (AFP Photo/Rodger Bosch)

"Mandela told us to expect controversy and embrace it, while remaining certain in the knowledge that what we were actually doing was what mattered," Johnson wrote.

"He said... whenever possible, we had to put history to work for a better future."

Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa echoed Mandela's approach in his response to the UCT protests.

"The government's attitude and policy to all heritage sites -- including statues of former imperialists like Cecil John Rhodes, among others -- is based on a national policy of reconciliation, nation-building and social cohesion," he said.

Related Article:

Britain's colonial shame: Slave-owners given huge payouts after abolition

Germany looks back at its Mandela-skeptic past

Deutsche Welle, 7 December 2013

For a long time, Nelson Mandela was a controversial figure among German politicians, while numerous German companies enjoyed good business relations with the Apartheid government. It took a while for this to change.

"A huge personality," "a glowing example," "a person full of patience, love and tolerance" - these are some of the descriptions of Nelson Mandela appearing in the German press in the wake of his death. The former South African president is being celebrated as an icon of a peaceful struggle for freedom and politicians from all segments of the political spectrum are paying tribute to him and his achievements.

However, a look back at the history of South African-German relations shows that public admiration of Mandela in Germany has not always been the norm. Some politicians of the past mistrusted Mandela.

Little faith in Mandela's intentions

Until the 1980s, successive West German governments took a cautious approach to Mandela, especially the conservative ones. Former foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher (Free Democratic Party) believes that some of these politicians have now been forced to reconsider their former stance.

Genscher himself advocated Mandela's release from prison to the United Nations in the 1980s - a move considered controversial in Germany. "I was accused of supporting a murderer and terrorist," Genscher told DW.

The categorization of Mandela as a "state terrorist" was also openly accepted in the US and UK. "There is no doubt that the German government could have and should have approached the inhuman Apartheid policy and the thoughtless American and British stance in a far more critical fashion," commented Ludger Schadomsky, a DW Africa expert.

Over time, the anti-Apartheid movement grew a following in Germany

Anti-Apartheid attitude takes hold

At the same time, the 1980s saw the rise of a strong anti-Apartheid movement. Products imported from South Africa, such as wine and fruit, were suddenly being boycotted by various church groups, civil organizations and school students. And although the German government distanced itself from the Apartheid regime, it did not at any point take part in the boycott initiative. According to Uschi Eid, member of Germany's Green Party and vice-president of the German Africa Foundation, some politicians at the time had no moral qualms about conducting friendly relations with South Africa.

Germany also had strong economic ties to South Africa. "Germany was South Africa's most important trade partner - and South Africa was Germany's most important trade partner in Africa," said Schadomsky. Even today, German carmaker Volkswagen is a major employer in the country, while engineering and electronics giant Siemens is an important investor. Nevertheless, due to public pressure, many German companies pulled out of South Africa in the late 1980s, moving their offices to countries like Zimbabwe.

Business interests

According to Michael Monnerjahn from the German-African Business Association, from today's perspective all this can classify as double standards among corporations. On public posters, German companies of the time denounced the existing racial segregation - however, they did not employ black Africans as managers.

German business in South Africa was shaken up by the upheaval in the country in the late 1980s. "Even if as a company manager you had a positive view of Nelson Mandela back then, you still had doubts as to whether he'd be able to restore social stability," said Monnerjahn.

Mandela had a powerful effect
on German parliamentarians
when he gave a speech in the
Bundestag

A widespread change of opinion

South Africa's gradual opening and intention to end Apartheid following the change of government in 1989 was unanimously welcomed by German politicians. This was the time of "Pretoriastroika" - a play on the word "Perestroika" used by Soviet politicians to refer to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system after the fall of communism. Mandela's negotiations with then-president Frederik Willem de Klerk, conducted from Mandela's prison cell and with Mandela suffering a shoulder bullet wound, had a large influence on the attitude change among German politicians, according to Schadomsky.

However, some skepticism was still present in Germany as late as 1996. This is when President of the Bundestag Rita Süssmuth (from the Christian Democratic Union party) invited Mandela, who had at this stage been South African president for two years, to speak in front of the German parliament. "The opinion was divided among certain politicians and members of parliament," Süssmuth recalled later on in a radio interview. But in the end, Mandela was permitted to make his speech, and "he stood there, his speech quiet but intense, and he had an effect on our parliamentarians."

Reservations and skepticism: today, these words in reference to Nelson Mandela seem like relics of a different era. For a long time now, Madiba - as Mandela was called in his home country - has been an immortal symbol of freedom and an icon for German politicians. According to Schadomsky, Mandela managed to win over his German skeptics with his charm.

Related Article:

Mandela, the man once branded a 'terrorist' by the US