Tracking the amiable Mr Jordaan

One hot afternoon in January 1996, I walked around the perimeter of Soccer City with Danny Jordaan. We were joined by the journalist Ian Hawkey, later to become a close friend, and the talk was amiable. Jordaan was a prodigiously amiable man. 

He still is an amiable man, so amiable that if there is a stage of amiability beyond amiability, a sort-of supercharged or V8 amiability, Jordaan is your guy. This is why, when working at the Sunday Times in Johannesburg, my colleagues and I always referred to Jordaan not as “Captain Amiable” but as — wait for it — “the lugubrious walrus”.

In early 1996, Jordaan had reason to be proud. Kenya could not discharge her hosting responsibilities to the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations, so South Africa stepped into the breach in a stroke of fabulous luck. 

This was because, as hosts, South Africa qualified automatically for the competition using — get this — rugby grounds such as those in Bloem and Port Elizabeth as venues for the soon-to-be-hosted football. 

Jordaan was always careful about what he said during those years, a trend that has continued, but one of the few noteworthy statements he used to make at the time was that football in South Africa needed its own dedicated stadiums. Only when it had them could it be liberated from its historical and circumstantial association with rugby and, therefore, apartheid.

South Africa had played three matches in her qualifying group when news of her status as new Cup of Nations hosts emerged. The three matches included 1-0 wins over Madagascar and Mauritius, and an away draw against Zambia, otherwise known as the sovereign principality of King Kalusha Bwalya. 

Although handily placed, it was by no means a given that Bafana Bafana — as they were coming to be known — would qualify. Both Zambia and Gabon were ahead of them in qualifying when the news came through that Kenya were unable to put on the show.

So Jordaan had pretty good reason to be pleased that hot afternoon at the beginning of 1996. He would have even more reason to be so as the tournament progressed. South Africa beat Cameroon, one of the powerhouses of the African game at the time, 3-0 in her opening match, which filled Bafana and the nation with a hope veering dangerously close to hysteria.

The knockouts duly arrived. A narrow win over Algeria in a Saturday afternoon cloudburst couldn’t dampen South African expectations and, when Ghana were thumped 3-0 in the semi-final, it seemed as though we were being given permission to think the unthinkable.

South Africa’s passage at this stage of the tournament was helped by Nigeria’s absence.

Nelson Mandela had criticised the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian environmental activist, by the Sani Abacha regime. In a fit of pique, Abacha had withdrawn Nigeria, the then cup holders, from the competition. Bafana would have needed to play Nigeria to take their title away from them. 

Instead, Bafana Bafana played Tunisia in the final. In the second half, Doc Khumalo played a diagonal ball crisp as a chicken wing to put through substitute striker Mark Williams, who made it 2-0 to the hosts. The Cup was venturing as far south as the continent stretched.

These were heady days for South Africa, South African football and the lugubrious Jordaan. The rand was still strong — or comparatively so — and locals were fond of talking about a quaint notion of the “Rainbow Nation”. Germany, England, France, the Netherlands and Brazil — a personal Jordaan favourite — ventured to these shores, or us to theirs, to play friendlies. It was probably a close-run thing as to who had bigger pulling power in those days: Mandela or Babeto, Dunga and Romario. Either way, Brazil were persuaded to arrive for the Nelson Mandela Challenge, in April 1996. 

David Elleray, one of the world’s most respected referees, took the whistle. The match started 20 minutes late because South Africa’s vice-president, Thabo Mbeki, couldn’t get to Soccer City on time.

South Africa scored first with a Phil Masinga header. They were in it until, suddenly, they weren’t, running out losers by three goals to two. Eighteen months later, Bafana again lost to Brazil in a friendly by the odd goal. Nothing to be embarrassed about here. Brazil beat many a side by the odd goal in the late 1990s. 

Jordaan was in charge of an association that took itself seriously because it presided over a national side who took themselves seriously. These were not perfect times — South Africa’s disappointing showing in the 1998 World Cup in France showed that — but they were times in which South African football was, if not a power-house, then at least committed to not being left behind.

It was such status that inspired South Africa, with Jordaan heading the local delegation, to bid to host the 2006 World Cup. We don’t know exactly what transpired in the murky underworld of international football realpolitik on the eve of the vote in 2000, suffice it to say that New Zealand delegate Charles Dempsey, a golf-playing Hobbit of a fellow, was given a mandate from his association to vote for South Africa. 

With talk of notes under hotel-room doors and midnight shenanigans, Dempsey disregarded the mandate from Oceania, the block he represented, and abstained. His abstention meant that votes between Germany and South Africa to host the 2006 tournament tied. Sepp Blatter, another of the amiable man school, stepped in. And cast the final vote for Germany. 

Jordaan and his fellow bid team, Michael Katz, Koos Bekker and Irvin Khoza, dusted themselves off, and the bid team started racking up the frequent flier miles in pursuit of hosting the World Cup once again. 

A couple of years later, with South Africa’s 2010 bid in full swing, I remember deciding to wait for Jordaan at Grenada airport in the Caribbean as he campaigned for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup. He was jetting in from Trinidad, where he’d had a couple of what I imagine were trying days with Jack Warner, the dodgy Caribbean power-broker and wheeler-dealer.

Jordaan knew I was in Granada for the Sunday Times. But he didn’t know that I’d be at the airport to say hello. As he fetched his bags and sauntered through passport control, I saw him in his customary dark, slightly shabby suit. 

He looked green. Whether it was from fatigue or fear of flying, or was simply the delayed after-effects of spending too much time with the cash-crazed Warner, I never got to find out. 

At the airport he amiably gave me the slip. But we did agree to meet at the palatial golf resort at which he was staring later. At the appointed time, under gently swaying palms, Jordaan breezed past in a golf cart, shouting directions to his next stop. I was beginning to feel I was being dragged into a Steve Martin movie against my will. Best keep amiable.

I followed on foot, while he hopped from hole to hole in a golf cart. I chased him to the seventh, clutching my notebook, and followed him to the eighth. He whizzed across the little bridge to the tenth.

The reason Jordaan and I were in Grenada was because the Confederation of North Central American and Caribbean Football Associations were having their annual meeting there. Voting for who would host the 2010 World Cup was only a month away and Jordaan wanted to do some last-minute schmoozing. 

Getting Mandela to press flesh and go walkabout with Warner in Trinidad was part of the initiative, but now Jordaan needed to tell the confederation delegates why they should encourage Warner and his mate, the big Chuck Blazer, to vote for South Africa.

It might have seemed like a straightforward matter. When Germany pipped South Africa at the post to host the 2006 World Cup, Blatter told the world that the next World Cup would be hosted in Africa. Morocco and Egypt had emerged as compelling bids, and Jordaan was taking no chances. 

Either way, here we were, Jordaan, myself and Blazer and his wife, sipping tea and making World Cup small talk so tiny it verged on the invisible. Whether they are scumbags or not, all journalists suffer from reputation bias, particularly in the eyes of those who have much to hide. I didn’t know it then, but Chuck had been supping at the football trough for years. He had much to hide.

Jordaan was increasingly difficult to get hold of once South Africa had been awarded 2010 hosting status in Zurich in 2004. He was always somewhere else. He used two passports, both of which were dangerously full. If he wasn’t going there, he was coming back. 

Because it was difficult to pin down, we resorted to tricking him. One of us on the sports desk would phone him and ask about something besides World Cup preparations. We would ask about the Champions’ League, or technological innovations in football, or the race for the English Premiership title. 

Jordaan would be overpowered by his enthusiasm for the game. He would be frank, thoughtful, engaging. Talking football in general put him into a good mood, whereupon we pounced, folding a World Cup question or two craftily into our list.

We could never have known that Jordaan’s dream, and his reputation, would soon begin to sour.

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