March 9 – Senegal’s FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura her assured her neutrality ahead of next week’s presidential election of the African Confederation (CAF), when Ahmad Ahmad will try to dislodge Issa Hayatou.
Ahmad, president of the Madagascan Federation and member of the CAF executive committee, goes head to head with Hayatou, who has been in office since 1988 and is vying for an unprecedented eighth term on March 16 in Addis Ababa.
“I am neutral,” Samoura told AFP even though she reportedly worked in Ahmad’s native Madagasacar when she was at the United Nations before joining FIFA.
“I just want the one who represents the future of African football to be elected with a solid programme that will enable this continent not only to continue to be a pool of talent, but also to remain the Africa of which everybody dreams.”
Maybe so but Samoura’s boss, Gianni Infantino, is understood to be privately campaigning for Ahmad to unseat Hayatou with whom he is said to have “irreconcilable differences”. Infantino insists he, too, is neutral and playing no role though was in Africa recently meeting African presidents in informal gatherings and saw a few more at this week’s final executive football summit in London designed to bring together member association presidents and general secretaries to discuss strategic matters.
He also attended the lavish and controversial birthday party of Zimbabwe FA and COSAFA president Philip Chiyangwa that saw a number of African member association presidents flown in to attend. Chiyangwa is Ahmad’s campaign manager and a close associate of Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe having been an MP.
In 1996 Chiyangwa proposed the indigenisation of Zimbabwe through the removal of white farmers from the country, threatening ‘Rwanda’ (alluding to the genocide that had taken place in that country), if they didn’t choose to leave.
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