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Dingilizwe Ntuli, Sports Editor
CONGRATULATIONS to South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe for his election as eighth president of the Confederation of African Football (Caf) in Rabat, Morocco, yesterday.

Africa’s ninth richest man was confirmed by the continent’s football association bosses in the Moroccan capital to officially consummate a deal brokered by Fifa president Giovanni Infantino at the height of campaigning for Caf’s top post a few weeks ago.

Motsepe’s rivals, Senegalese Augustin Senghor and Ahmed Yahya of Mauritania, accepted Infantino’s pact for them to withdraw their candidatures and be Caf vice-presidents, while vastly experienced football administrator Jacques Anouma from Côte d’Ivoire took up the role of Motsepe’s special advisor.

Motsepe is now the most powerful man in African football and he will also take up a seat as one of Infantino’s vice-presidents at Fifa, making him very influential in world football.

Just a few weeks ago, the billionaire was mostly known in the world of business, although he owns top South African Premier Soccer League side Mamelodi Sundowns, a club he took over about 20 years ago.

Most people believed Mamelodi Sundowns was just a pet project, as Motsepe never attempted to involve himself in the running of South African football in the same manner as other club bosses such as Orlando Pirates owner Irvine Khoza, who is also the PSL chairman and Safa vice-president, and Kaizer Motaung, the Kaizer Chiefs owner and a member of the Safa executive committee.

Motsepe always seemed to mind his own business, not wanting to upset the apple cart, despite the influence he could have exerted had he chosen to use his vast wealth and connections.

After all, his brother-in-law is South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, but Motsepe chose instead to transform Mamelodi Sundowns into a footballing giant, not only in South Africa, but on the continent, and in the process changing the face of South African football.

He made the Mamelodi Sundowns players the best remunerated in the South African PSL, forcing other clubs to try and match the salaries the Brazilians pay to attract the best talent in the league.

This made the South African PSL a destination of choice for players from other countries on the continent as well as South America.

Never once did Motsepe show any interest in running South African football that it came as a huge shock when he was initially suggested as the ideal candidate for the Caf presidency.

Always one to shy away from the spotlight, Motsepe agreed after persuasion from Cosafa led by Phillip Chiyangwa.

Chiyangwa and Cosafa felt that it’s time Caf is led by a president from an English-speaking and for it to have a greater say in the direction African football should take after decades of being constantly mired in controversy.

Cosafa didn’t waste time in selling Motsepe as the best man for the job and their trump card was that he was an outsider with no links to the maladministration and corruption that has bedevilled Caf.

After all, the other candidates he was contesting against were linked to the previous corrupt administrations, although they might not have been personally involved in the rot.

It proved to be a masterstroke by Cosafa, which perhaps made Infantino’s proposal of letting someone with no previous association with Caf taking the reins for the organisation to start on a clean slate to reinvent itself.

Now that Motsepe, who was named after the great African nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba, who briefly served as the first Prime Minister of the newly independent DR Congo in 1960 before being ousted and assassinated in 1961, is at the helm, can we really count on him as a new broom to sweep Caf clean and take our football in the direction of proper development and success?

Or will turn out to be just another Ahmad, who promised so much at the beginning of his tenure before being drunk with the wine of the Caf presidency and retraced the footsteps of his corrupt and greedy predecessors?

Motsepe is a very wealthy man and we have been told that he won’t put his hands in the Caf cookie jar, but haven’t we heard such statements before.

The South African certainly doesn’t need Caf money, as he has more money than the confederation, but it’s not just embezzlement that has been at the centre of the rot at Caf.

It’s issues of governance, with transparent checks and balances that Caf needs to thrive and become a modern organisation compared to the strongman image promoted by the previous leaders.

We certainly don’t expect Motsepe to steal Caf money for personal business like those before him, and we also hope nepotism and corruption won’t be used to describe his reign at the Cairo-based confederation.

He has hardly been accused of any of the above in his business journey and if only he can translate this clean persona and success he has built into Caf, then the sleeping giant might just awaken.

Caf has been a stinking mess for as long as one can remember and we pray that Motsepe hits the ground running and make controversy and maladministration alien to the confederation.

Surely African football can’t still be talking about potential in the third decade of the 21st century instead of talking about success after success, with big multi corporations competing to partner with Caf.

Caf can’t continue being sustained by Fifa grants when it’s the biggest confederations.

It is the biggest confederation in Fifa and should be using its numbers to influence policies on world football, but corruption has reduced it to arch beggers.

Hopefully Motsepe is not a front of some powers behind the scenes and is there to genuinely improve and rebuild the battered image of African football.