Tired of overstaying leaders?
Look no further than famed basketballer and middle distance runner, Cameroonian Issa Hayatou.
For 26 years, he has ruled the Confederation of African Football (Caf) with an iron fist and was on Sunday re-elected for another four-year term at the helm of the continental body.
Caf held its talk-show, dubbed a congress, but just a mere formality, in Morocco on Sunday to confirm the long-serving leader and four members of the executive committee.
Ivorian Jacques Anouma wanted to oppose Hayatou, but rules were changed last year to ensure that only those in the executive committee can stand elections.
Anouma, who sits on the Fifa executive committee, was disqualified and attempts to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) were futile.
So as it stands, Hayatou will oversee the next Afcon finals in 2015 and the last in 2017 and hopefully after that it will be time for fresh leadership for an organisation that has failed to grow football in Southern Africa.
Here is a man who decided, in 2000, that Zimbabwe was not good enough to host the Afcon finals and moved the event to his West African friends in Nigeria and Ghana. Ghana hosted the same event eight years later.
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The likes of Burkina Faso, with worse stadiums than some secondary school grounds which cannot even match Rufaro, Barbourfields, National Sports and Mandava, have been allowed to host the event. It is common knowledge that Hayatou preferred Egypt to South Africa for the hosting of the 2010 World Cup.
Here is a man who banned Kaizer Chiefs from the Champions League when they refused to travel to strife-torn Madagascar for a match when it was all clear then that flying to the island nation was risky. Here is a man who has never watched even one Cosafa Senior Challenge final since its inception, but would ensure that at any given chance, he is at Cecafa and Wafu.
We wonder if in his scheme of things Southern Africa is part of Caf. We have seen less and less support for Southern Africa from Caf and no wonder Herve Renard, the Zambia coach, was fined $10 000 for alleging that the continental body was happy to see the back of Chipolopolo.
For starters, were Zambia not supposed to play in the Festival of Champions (Confederation Cup) this year in Brazil?
When Renard suggested that Caf thought Zambia were not “sexy enough’’ to play in Brazil, he knew what he was saying and Caf had to act quickly to silence him.
It is unfortunate that football association leaders in Africa have been cowed into silence. They have not been able to ask how much Caf is making from sponsorship deals with Orange and Samsung. They have been silenced by the meagre grants to their associations, which have done little to develop football in their respective countries. Worse still, there is the small matter of per diems from each and every session the leaders attend.
We wonder what the next four years will bring to African football, but as we see, this re-election is just one step going forward and 10 steps backwards.
