Football world cup tournament threatened by assassination

A councillor in the South African town of Nelspruit was assassinated this week. Jimmy Mohlala had blown the whistle on corruption in the construction contracts of FIFA's forthcoming World Cup 2010 tournaments, being held in South Africa.

Mohlala - who was a respected member of his community -- had raised the issue himself with a high-level FIFA delegation while they were inspecting the site in February last year. He was ignored: the head of FIFA-SA Ron Delmont instead said they were 'impressed with the progress made so far.' And the central committee of the ruling African National Congress demanded that Mohlala be fired from his post. However he stil was the speaker of the town council ANC-faction when he was assassinated.see The ten football stadia being built to house the prestigious international football tournaments, are suffering from 33% cost overrruns. see Football insiders in South Africa say that this assassination is posing the biggest threat yet to the prestigious international tournament, especially after it was announced by ANC officials that the construction was running $320,000-million over its $980,000-million budget. see South Africa's sports minister Makhenkesi Stofile said in parliament in December that they were running 33% over budget - and that they expected the municipal ratepayers to make up for the shortfall. Some top football experts such as Franz Beckenbauer and Horst R. Schmidt , and even some FIFA executives, have been raising cautious concerns over the poor planning, organisation, and slow pace of South Africa’s preparations for the event. The entire tournament is expected to draw some 350,000 football fans by the time the finals take place in 2010. See Very few people inside South Africa actually seem to be all that happy about having the FIFA WC2010 in the country, which is beset with political and socio-economic problems. Especially the poor residents in the country's teeming townships are growing increasingly irate about the vast sums of money being spent on it while the squatter camps just keep on proliferating and the country's infrastructure is collapsing. The football fans expected to descend on South Africa in 2010, may have to face some major confrontations with local civil society groups -- who see the WC2010 as the perfect opportunity for massive protest campaigns to vent their growing list of grievances against the current government's mismanagement of the country. This will be our chance to make our voices heard... Said Richard "Bricks" Mokolo, former footballer and spokesman for the Anti-Privatisation Forum, speaking from his humble home in Orange Farm squatter camp outside Johannesburg: “The World Cup will be our chance to make our voices heard...we are getting ready.” On top of these lists grievances is the painfully slow pace of building public housing and the widespread claims of corruption with the foreign donor money earmarked for building the stadiums, such as the fraud issue raised by the assassinated Jimmy Mohlala. Millions of homeless township residents living in dismal shack cities, are increasingly resentful about these funds they feel is being wasted on ten prestigious football stadiums which will only be used for two weeks - while their housing needs are being ignored. UN rapporteur highly critical Returning from a recent mission to South Africa, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Miloon Kothari, agreed with these township residents complaints. He also noted that the township housing projects and upgrades for the city of Johannesburg were suffering serious delays due to the WC2010 construction programme.

“while more than $9bn was budgeted for the building and upgrading of infrastructure for the football World Cup in 2010, including 10 stadiums and a high-speed train, reconverting Johannesburg into a world-class city is already increasing housing prices and increased demand for construction materials has led to a foreseeable shortage of cement” ...see

Millions of South Africans live in squalid township shacks without any kind of amenities and near-riots frequently erupt among homeless squatter-camp residents whenever another set of the tiny houses is ready for occupation. The assassinated Nelspruit ANC-leader tried to address all these issues, also because he agreed with the increasingly angry local township children, who were were running a constant interruption campaign on the stadium's construction site after their school was confiscated for the construction crew. Mohlala 's assassination has also raised widespread fears -- not only that the world cup tournament could be endangered, but also that the current split inside the ruling ANC and its breakaway party, COPE, is also increasingly causing the warring factions tp turn to political assassination to settle their politicial turf-battles. see Nelspruit municipal spokeswoman Bessie Pienaar told me that Mohlala, who also was the speaker of the Mbombela municipality, was killed and his 16-year-old son was shot and wounded. Local police spokesman Abie Khoabane was reticent to reveal more details, other than that there had been a shooting in which 'a man was shot dead and his son was also shot.' It wasn't a robbery: nothing was stolen from Mohlala's house. About a year ago, Mohlala had raised political temperatures countrywide by blowing the whistle on a colleague inside the ruling ANC, the municipal manager Jacob Dladla -- about widespread fraud in the football stadium contract. The local council then investigated Dladla on a range of allegations, including the manipulation of tenders in 2010 construction contracts, harassment of council employees, and failure to keep the council updated on progress ahead of the Soccer World Cup, the Mail and Guardian newspaper reported last February. However, nothing came of the investigation at all - and instead, the African National Congress called for him to be fired,