FOOTBALL can be a filthy business, as events unfolding in Qatar can attest. Working and housing conditions of migrant workers contracted to build stadiums for the 2022 World Cup are so dire they have been described by the International Trade Union Confederation as “simply slavery”. 

The death toll among the labourers has been so high that, according to the pressure group Play Fair Qatar, “as things stand, more than 62 workers will die for each game played during the 2022 tournament”.

There’s going to be a lot of noise in this regard, and even long-time Fifa sponsors Visa and Coca-Cola, who pay an estimated $30-million a year to be part of a handful of primary sponsors, have chosen to speak out. 

Such is the power of boycott threats, and similar statements condemning human rights abuses in the blazing desert heat may be forthcoming from Adidas, Gazprom, Hyundai, Budweiser and McDonald’s. But don’t expect much from Zurich and Fifa.

Writing in the Guardian, Marina Hyde noted, “Clearly there must be a magic number of slave deaths in the world’s richest country that would render the Qatar World Cup a moral and political no-no. But what is that number? What is the ballpark figure where deaths in the construction of ballparks become unacceptable?”

Hyde went on to suggest the question wasn’t giving Fifa president Sepp Blatter sleepless nights. He maintains that the construction companies are responsible for the workers – not Fifa. 

This, of course, is a vastly different tack from the schtick that Blatter’s been spouting on his reelection campaign. On Friday, the 79-year-old gnome will in all likelihood be returned for a fifth term as Fifa president. 

For once, cynics have suggested, this has been a contest untainted by vote-buying – simply because there’s no need for it; Blatter’s hold over Fifa is now absolute, and he hasn’t really bothered with such trifling matters as election manifestos.

Instead, he’s been swanning about, telling the world’s ratbags about football’s immense power to heal the planet. To those urging a boycott of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, he’s responded that the tournament would bring peace and stability to the region. “I am sure that football is stronger than any other movement,” he said.

Peace and stability. It’s a very common refrain. Last month, he tweeted, “Honoured to meet the King and the PM of Bahrain. Very encouraged by their support of the role football can play to bring peace to the region.”

The responses on social media were not very kind. Many pointed out that whatever Blatter lacked in shame vis-a-vis hobnobbing with the despotic Shaikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, he may well have made up for it with stuffed brown envelopes. 

This week there was another “mission of peace” in the Middle East, where he failed to persuade the Palestinian Football Association to drop its call to suspend Israel from Fifa and instead have a “peace game” between the two national sides.

The point of all this, though, is to suggest that if he has learned anything from his long association with Blatter, then South African Football Association president Danny Jordaan is exactly the right sort of person to be mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro. 

Many commentators have praised the ruling party for giving him the job, saying it was a rare display of shrewdness on their part – and a sign that the ANC was limbering up most emphatically for next year’s local elections.

The sort of troubles Jordaan will face as mayor will not be unfamiliar to Blatter. The ANC talk of service delivery, but their problem in Port Elizabeth is internal – the region is riven with corruption and factionalism. Think of a bag of cats fighting over a bowl of cream, full of hissing fury and getting nowhere.

Jordaan’s critics have called on him to step down as the country’s football boss and point out that, by accepting the mayoral position, he has contravened both the Fifa and Safa constitutions’ clauses on political neutrality and he has compromised Safa’s independence.

Jordaan’s response was quite Blatteresque. He’s not stepping down. He can do both jobs. Besides the Safa job is not a job. It’s just something he does, unpaid, as a volunteer. And he was never giving up the sport for politics. 

“I have made it clear,” he told the Citizen, “that I am committed to football and have spoken about the kind of things I want to achieve. This is a national project and the ANC understands that.”

Clearly the Safa gig has better prospects in the short- to mid-term than the mayoral one.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.