In my Fifa-inspired world disorder, Cele would be booted to the transfer list

I’m not too sure, but it could be the copious amounts of cough syrup that I have been forced to survive on, this recent past, that planted this idea in my blurry head.

Methinks it’s time the world adopts a completely new disorder, dismantles the old system and brings in something fresh that would give even the ordinary person much more say in deciding who leads their country.

Think about it. The world adopts a system like the football federations you know, where countries can bid on the open market for leaders they fancy to run their own countries.

After all, elections in most of Africa have become just a formality, a colourful power-displaying spectacle that allows liberation-movement governments to return to office and continue the looting and pillaging.

The structures are there already – the great UN could play a role equivalent to Fifa, which governs and controls the affairs of world football.

It could work – like if Messi feels he no longer wants to be part of the vintage furniture at Barcelona, he puts in a transfer request to attract possible suitors. Of course, whoever is interested needs to have the dollars and diamonds and gold bars to pay.

In an event like that, I can imagine a situation where 53 African countries vie for the services of Major General Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s strongman.

After all, isn’t he paraded to the rest of us as a model leader ushering in a new Africa? Wasn’t his country voted among the safest places to visit for tourists in the world? Also, the Rwandan capital Kigali is reputed to be the cleanest city in Africa and among the top in the world.

I would personally hustle my loan shark for a generous sum to contribute to acquiring the services of Kagame. I mean, the man knows his stuff. He leads. He is decisive. He doesn’t, like on our front, have to wait months or even years to fire a sensational failure like Police Minister Bheki Cele.

The Yanks, who like gimmicks, may find Cele a likely candidate for one of the displays at the internationally acclaimed Disneyland. The more the man tries to sound and appear macho, alas, the more he sounds and appears comical. Take his bold promise to arrest the murderers of slain former Bafana Bafana and Orlando Pirates goalie and captain, Senzo Meyiwa, within days. It’s been years now and Cele no longer breathes a word about the case.

He tries to appear to be at the forefront of the battle against rampant violent crime stalking our country. Truth be told, he is a man who knows how to perform for the cameras.

He has this ability to have wide-eyed journalists hanging on his every word. But in reality the man is just a body bag counter who only arrives at crime scenes long after his overworked and underpaid men and women in blue have faced off with robbers.

I am not a big fan of Vlado Putin. There is something mechanical about that man. He scares the daylights out of my African eyes used to the sight of such presidents as Paul Biya of Cameroon, literally clinging to dear life in public forums.

This week, as the bombs rained down on Ukraine from Moscow, social media was ablaze with a video of Putin snubbing his motorcade to walk home. The man even appeared to be outwalking his security detail.

Now imagine Cele, wearing his hat and sports jacket, walking in the streets of Hillbrow with the confidence such as displayed by Putin. I don’t see him surviving the hyena-like antics of the muggers of the notorious flatland.

In fact, I challenge Cele to walk all the way down Claim Street at dusk to prove his statement this week that South Africa doesn’t have a crisis when it comes to violent crime.

What? Well, if like him you are under 24-hour guard and don’t have to worry about being attacked in your home, burnt with a hot iron and mugged in broad daylight in central Joburg, perhaps you would argue there is no crisis.

The reality on the street is different. Citizens are living in fear. I even thought of taking out insurance on my cough medicine, but the quotes were just out of my league.

In a week in which President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the termination of career policeman General Khehla Sitole’s services as police commissioner, one can’t stop wondering why Cele, as the political head of an institution that failed to deal decisively and timeously with the July 2021 looting, was spared. If we were already in this new world disorder, I guarantee Cele would long have been in limbo on the transfer list, shunned even by nations of smaller means such as Lesotho, Mozambique or Malawi.

Why do we still have this man, who has overseen a police service struggling to deal with a sharply rising crime wave, in charge of our lives? He belongs on the transfer list.

But if my dream of adopting this new system kicked in now, South Africa might find itself in trouble selling off some of its so-called stars. Like Mme Naledi Pandor, a model intellectual and activist. How would we sell someone like that to the world which is increasingly getting younger and more robust?

Even her feeble tantrum at Vlado this week was quickly rebuked by President Ramaphosa. I can only imagine how many tissues Mme Pandor spent wiping her tears in that meeting with The Buffalo Soldier, who we are told can appear meek in public but yay, try him behind closed doors.   

What a pity Malusi Gigaba is no longer in government. In the event that the transfer window opened and he was among the candidates, I have no doubt that Gambia would make a strong bid for the man whose X-rated video almost sent the internet crashing a few years ago.

Everyone was raving about how the gods had gifted the man generously in the tools department. Pity it doesn’t look like they were as generous with the brains.

Anyway, remember, Gambia has a vibrant sex tourism industry. Tired European gogos flock to the Gambian coast to live out their fantasies with young African studs.

Who better to lead a ministry overseeing such than a man of Gigaba’s calibre, er, tool? DM168

Mr Styles is the former president of the Organisation for Stylish People of South Africa (Osposa). He is against anything and anyone unstylish.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for R25 at Pick n Pay, Exclusive Books and airport bookstores. For your nearest stockist, please click here.