Fraud and Corruption: Beyond the material numbers - You can steal a person’s car, invade their home and steal all their earthly possessions, and I might understand and forgive you. After all Les Misérables the French historical novel by Victor Hugo first published in 1862, if anything teaches us, and reminds us, that generosity, kindness of spirit and redemption can be found in desperate acts driven by grinding poverty.
But to steal someone’s aspirations, goals, hopes and dreams and the opportunities to attain them simply to grow fat, and bask in the false admiration of your wealth, wealth you neither deserved or earned is a crime and a cruelty I cannot comprehend.
There is no excuse.
This petition is about Soccer. But it’s actually also about the state of sport in South Africa.
Our athletes put their entire life into pursuing their goals, aspirations and dreams only to reach the top of their codes and find maladministration and corruption by officials living in the lap of luxury not commensurate with their income, has robbed them of their opportunities to perform at their best, if at all on the world stage.
Theses aspirant athletes’ success can inspire unimaginable joy at the triumph over adversity of the human spirit, can unite and motivate an entire nation.
South Africans above all can recall the miracle of the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
The seemingly rampant theft and mismanagement of funds by officials in sport in almost all sporting codes, is not just about ineptitude and plundering of resources meant for others, it’s about destroying the soul, destroying the pride, the hopes and dreams of an entire nation, not only the people for whom the funds were intended.
And that is why we must fight it.
Thank you for reading and signing this petition, and if you found the cause worthy, for sharing it with your network if you've already done so. If you haven't, please do. I have every confidence that this is one of those petitions that will achieve its objective and in so doing make a difference. Thanks entirely to people like you.
As an update, I have requested permission to upload the entire 44 page high level report and hope to have it uploaded in due course.
Warmest regards
Bart