Pervasive corruption is the air world football governing body lives, eats and breathes

Corruption is mapped in Fifa’s DNA. Receiving and giving bribes is its way of life. Fifa does not know how to survive any other way.

In the wake of the arrests of its top officials – Sepp Blatter not among them, of course - some of its mega-sponsors like Coca-Cola, Adidas, McDonald’s and Visa have made weak calls for the owner of world football to clean house and raise his ethical standards.

This is just like animals in the jungle releasing a statement calling on the lions to eat healthy by becoming vegetarians. It won’t happen and they know it; that is why in the same breath with their hapless pleas, they said they have always known this is how Fifa operates and the latest storm, if any such thing can affect Fifa, will just go away like all before it. It will be business as usual.

Kenyans mourn that their 2010 constitution just devolved corruption from the centre in Nairobi to the village. Well, Fifa devolved corruption from Zurich to its federations a long time ago.

Say what you will about Sepp Blatter – a master politician, a man with more than a cat’s nine lives, a conjurer who can shuffle papers on a desk and leave no fingerprints on them.

But Blatter neither started nor devolved Fifa’s corruption. He only perfected it when he reached the helm. Blatter was only a very good student of the man under whom the lowliest football officials in the world started eating.

João Havelange, a Brazilian lawyer who turned 99 early this month, served as Fifa President from 1974 to 1998. Before Havelange was an Englishman named Sir Stanley Rous, as austere and aristocratic as they come.

FIFA'S EXCESSES

For him, the world was Europe and Europe was the world. Havelange, an Olympic athlete in his youth, was consumed with ambition, the ambition to become rich, famous and powerful. Thus, he set his sights on Sir Stanley’s job, the most powerful in world sport.

Havelange’s election campaign game plan was maddeningly simple: just the majority of Fifa’s members. Across the world today, people are angry and frustrated by Fifa’s excesses but do remember this: this corrupt billion dollar behemoth is in actual fact a democracy and a thriving one at that.

Is democracy the place where the minority have their say but the majority have their way? Well, look no further than Fifa. Of course, as in all real democracies, money oils the machines and helps people to make up their minds.

It is not like the United Nations where one of five Big Boys can veto what the rest of the world has decided. At Fifa, even if the people are wracked with jiggers and Ebola, the weight of the vote of your country is equal to that of the USA which has troops in all the oceans of the world and satellites in outer space.

So in 1973 and 1974, Joao Havelange, upon satisfying his lawyer’s mind that the Fifa constitution stood for one country one vote, embarked on a world tour. A hugely energetic man, he roamed the poorest countries of the world, especially in Africa and Asia, loaded with lots and lots of cash. He all but ignored Europe, whose votes were already in Sir Stanley’s debe before the polling was done.

He accompanied his brown envelopes with captivating promises. I am going to increase Africa’s slots in the World Cup, he said, I will take them away from Europe. Africans and Asians were ecstatic. And they had the numbers. When the votes were finally counted in the 1974 Fifa presidential polls, Sir Stanley was out of a job. Thus began Havelange’s 24 year reign and the consigning of Fifa as a rich European nations’ club to history.

Havelange kept his promises. When he took over leadership, its showcase, the quadrennial World Cup, featured only 16 teams with Africa having but a single slot.

Havelange doubled the number of finalists, with Africa getting five slots. The Fifa U-17 World Cup, the Fifa U-20 World Cup, the Fifa Confederations Cup and the Fifa Women’s World Cup, were all started during his tenure with African nations performing spectacularly well in the junior tournaments.

The revolution in World football was complete and entrenched. It came as a complete a package. Among Havelange’s friends and financiers was an immensely wealth criminal named Castor de Andrade who operated Rio de Janeiro’s largest illegal gambling empire. Hundreds of policemen, judges and politicians were in his employ so the law’s arm, long though it is reputed to be, couldn’t reach him for a long a time.

Andrade once invaded the Maracana Stadium armed with a pistol and sufficiently frightened the referee into awarding his team Bangu a penalty against America which helped it win the match 3-2.

In 1994 when his 40 days were finally up, he was sent to prison for six years. This is the man whose CV Havelange had refereed as being “amiable and pleasant, a good family man, and a devoted friend who is admired as a sports administrator.”

In 1998, Havelange decided to step down as Fifa President. All of powerful Europe wanted Sweden’s Lennart Johansen, the Uefa president, to succeed him. But Havelange had other ideas. Sepp Blatter, his long serving secretary-general was also interested in the job. Havelange threw his weight behind Blatter. They were two of a kind, including their choice of dubious friends, a fondness for the brown envelope and ability not to get nailed.

Johansen was carbon copy of Sir Stanley. Blatter saw him off roundly, thanks in great part to African votes. Havelange and Blatter knew that the healthy democracy that is Fifa assured them of a lifetime at the top – in exchange for devolving Fifa’s corruption and, on the very good side, expanding African space at the world level. Blatter is going to serve as long as he likes and all the African football tin-gods who live off their poor people will reign with him forever.

BROUGHT WORLD CUP TO AFRICA

Blatter brought the World Cup to Africa in 2010. There are millions of Africans who are willing to forgive him anything he does and just cherish him as a friend of the continent. He is their bulwark up there where it matters. Politics and raw, dirty and exceedingly mean and if you have a man who can handle it for you, then you are willing to turn a blind eye to any of his excesses.

The man who said that the way to improve the fortunes of women’s football is to make the girls dress in skin tight pants “like in volleyball” was practically guaranteed fifth term in yesterday’s poll despite all the hullabaloo kicked up by the Zurich arrests.

Being investigated is nothing new to Blatter. In 2001, Fifa felt the heat of the collapse of its marketing partner ISL/ISMM and faced the prospect of financial collapse. Blatter faced intense pressure, which he deflected, to become more forthcoming with details of the contract between Fifa and its doomed partner. He survived all the inquiries. In fact, the accountant in him somehow conjured up the magic to return something in excess of $1 billion by the end of that year.

Then in 2002 his secretary general, Michel Zen-Ruffinen, claimed that his 1998 election was riddled was riddled with corruption. In that election, Blatter saw off Cameroon’s Issa Hayatou, who had the support of Europe but not Africa. Apparently, African voters had seen something. For his troubles, Zen-Ruffinen lost his job.

Next was Qatar’s Mohammed bin Hamman who elected to oppose Blatter for the presidency in 2011. He didn’t get to the voting booths. He was investigated for a cash-for-votes scandal that derailed his candidacy, thus returning Blatter unopposed.

Lennart Johansen, Blatter’s first victim at the polls, may say all he likes about reviewing Fifa’s decision to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar. He is understandably enjoying himself as his nemesis stews the broth being cooked by the US Justice Department and Swiss authorities. But it will be short lived; Blatter won’t jump from it into the fire. He will walk free, no first or second degree burns.

Believe it or not, Fifa is registered as a charity. The world’s governments know just how unforgiving this mercy organization’s sword of vengeance can be if they so much as tip-toe into its federations. Fifa is jealous. It is categorical that football matters are its sole preserve and no other power on earth should venture there. When some do, the sun doesn’t set before a steep sentence plus a hefty fine comes your way.

But Fifa shares its profits with these federations. Part of the reason why football campaigns are vicious among competitors is the assurance of this money. You could become a millionaire overnight. You could live like a king. Many do, still are doing.

Thousands of careers have been doomed by this corruption. The perpetrators are the people who keep Blatter and his people in power. So Fifa can’t take action against them. But then, come to think of it, can you take action against yourself?