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10% COMMISSION FOR WHAT?

29/09/2020 01:14:00 BY Lwazi's Pandora's Boxs

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My dearest readers ...

Writing in South Africa’s City Press over the weekend, Modidima Mannya, an advocate and executive director of legal services at UNISA, made a poignant observation on moral authority or, the lack thereof, from leaders.

“It is illogical for those in positions of power who are embroiled in allegations of corruption and malfeasance to believe that citizens must listen to them when they have lost moral courage.”

Mannya’s observation could very well have been made towards the illogical request by some former Premier League of Eswatini (PLE) Executive Committee members to be paid a commission amounting to E500 000.

The money, we are told, is a ten per cent commission for negotiating sponsorship packages more than eight years ago.

I almost fell off my chair when Weekend Sports Editor Sabelo Ndzinisa told me of this ludicrous claim last Saturday while I was replacing my blood-stream with the amber-coloured Scottish waters at my humble place of abode.

“You can’t be serious! Ten per cent commission for what? This is a sick joke!” I bellowed. I still hope this is a figment of someone’s very fertile imagination because it stinks of never-ending greed and malfeasance of the highest degree.

It is beside the point that such a claim could be forwarded to an organisation that, as I brutalise this laptop keyboard, is E4 million in the red as a result of poor administrative decisions on issues that could have been avoided.

One need no reminder of the emotional decision to sack Chief Executive Officer Simanga Nhleko, who has gone to court and won an unfair dismissal case. The PLE has to fork out a cool E670 000.

Let’s unravel this myopic belief that some former PLE Executive Committee are entitled to any commission.

Lie

This is the biggest lie I have heard since Jonah said he had been swallowed by the fish in biblical times. This is said to be in some minutes of an Executive committee meeting some aeons ago. You can laugh here, you son of a gun!

The dearly departed PLE chairman, Victor ‘Maradona’ Gamedze – may his soul repose peacefully – had apparently opened a ‘special account’ for the PLE Executive Committee.

This is where he was supposed to deposit the so-called 10 per cent he was entitled to as chief negotiator for the sponsorships. But we know Gamedze never took any 10 per cent from sponsorships and used that special account for his private dealings.

He occasionally paid the self-same executive committee members allowances ranging from E10 000 to E20 000 from that account.

That’s why no sooner had the bumbling fool pulled the trigger on the fateful Sunday evening of January 18, 2014 at exactly 6:53pm, in a month’s time that same account saw a flurry of withdrawals, which hopefully will become a subject of investigations by the new executive committee so that we can get to the bottom of this greediness and set the tone for accountability and transparency.

I find it distasteful that these people who now want commission had a good seven years to demand the money from Victor Gamedze, who was chairman at the time. Why didn’t they demand it then if indeed they were entitled to it? Why now?

In any case, even if there was a verbal agreement that whosoever gets a sponsorship is entitled to a 10 per cent commission, this applied to a NEW sponsorship. The last NEW sponsorship we have had in our football was the Ingwenyama Cup sponsorship by Sincephetelo Motor Vehicle Accident Fund (SMVAF) in 2015. So, what is this 10 per cent they are talking about now for?

sponsorship

Which is the NEW sponsorship that we all don’t know about now?

Mr. Carmichael, there can never be a commission for sponsorship renewals. It would be tantamount to broad daylight fraud. A criminal offence. Besides, all the four sponsors we have, MTN Eswatini, EswatiniBank, SMVAF and EPTC are so much involved in not just the sponsorship package, but some are even having an in-put in fixtures now. That’s the level we are at. Most, if not all the sponsors, now even decide on the sponsorship package breakdown. Every cent is accounted for.

There is nowhere in the sponsorship package where there is a 10 per cent commission for Executive members of the PLE.

So, why do some people think they are entitled to 10 per cent commission? For what? And where is that 10 per cent commission supposed to come from?

We have a National First Division League sponsored by MTN Eswatini with a first prize package of E130 000; a first division league that doesn’t have one knockout tournament of its own yet, we have people who are supposed to serve football thinking they deserve to have E500 000 just to share amongst themselves for negotiating renewal of sponsorships. Come on, good people. Let’s be serious. These people should really be ashamed of themselves. Teams are struggling to make ends meet. The organisation is swimming in sewage of debts and only posted a shocking E77 250 surplus at the end of the June 30, 2020 financial year-ending having spent a staggering E1.9 million in administrative costs.

Yet, today we have people, amongst us, who want to tell the sponsors and everybody associated with the game that they deserve to receive a 10 per cent commission of E500 000 for just showing face during sponsorship negotiations. Some of us are aware that the dearly departed Gamedze almost single-handedly negotiated most of the sponsorships and perhaps just needed one or two executive members to be part of the meeting.

attitude

It is exactly this attitude from people entrusted with running the game that shows who they really are. Malfeasance betrays public trust and confidence in those given the chance to serve in football. I want to implore the new PLE Executive Committee headed by Mark Carmichael to throw this claim for commission in the nearest dustbin where it belongs.

Football officials, as Mannya said about public officers, must always go with the spirit of ‘what can I give?’, not ‘what can I get?’ –more especially when you don’t even deserve it.

The words of aerospace scientist and former president of India APJ Abdul Kalam captures my feelings with this inane 10 per cent commission claim.

“Where do evils like corruption arise from? They come from never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free, ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and be replaced with a ‘what-can-I-give?’ spirit.”

Amen.