”There is plenty of match-fixing going on and I’ve been involved in football for many years. I have been approached myself and even [been] threatened to let another team win.”
These were the words of an anonymous Premier Soccer League coach as the much-heralded ”Operation Dribble” investigation into match-fixing in South African football was launched in June 2004.
More than 40 arrests were made, ranging from club bosses to match commissioners, referees and their assistants. But, more than two years on, only four ”small players” have been convicted of attempting to alter the outcome of matches, despite what everybody in the local game knows — that the problem was rife.
Why was no action taken when some officials were caught red-handed on video paying bribes to officials, or when respected members of the South African football community testified to police — under oath — that they knew some of the perpetrators and named names?
The answer is simple. The problem ran far deeper than police ever imagined and suddenly they were faced with either letting the investigation fall away, or arresting and charging some of the biggest names in our soccer — a move that would bring the game in this country to its knees.
Operation Dribble was, I believe, launched at the insistence of Fifa. We had just been awarded the 2010 Soccer World Cup in May that year and had to be seen to be taking positive steps in eradicating what the ”suits” in Switzerland knew was an issue in our game.
So, the arrests were made, but the more police learned in their interrogations, the more they came to realise that should these cases go to court, it would blow open a scandal that could destroy the game in South Africa. And so it was left to slip away slowly.
The Italians had the courage of their convictions to charge and prosecute the biggest names in their football, leading to the almost unthinkable relegation of Juventus from this season’s Serie A. The truth is, their game is better equipped than ours to handle such dramatic changes.
We still operate in a system where knowledge is power and overrides just about everything. People, some of them implicated in Operation Dribble, appear to have been given prime positions within our football to avoid spilling the beans on those higher up the food chain.
As top leagues across the world such as Italy, Germany and Brazil deal with their own issues — and, let me just say, I believe it goes on just about everywhere — we are left to wonder. A dodgy decision is given further scrutiny by pundits and fans. Why? Because although we touched the surface, we never found closure in dealing with our own corruption cancer.
But this is nothing new. The Motimela commission concluded, as far back as 1999, that numerous top officials in our game were guilty of corruption and should be outed.
That report — as with that of the investigation into match-fixing in 2004 — has never been publicly released and lies gathering dust in the office of South African Football Association president Molefi Oliphant, who, unfortunately, is not one to act on the courage of his convictions.
Nick Said is editor: special projects of Kick Off Magazine