Horn of Africa charity soccer games no PR stunt, official says
Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:40 GMT
Issa Hayatou, president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), speaks during the draw for soccer's 2009 Confederation Cup in Johannesburg November 22, 2008. REUTERS/Radu Sigheti
By George Fominyen
DAKAR (AlertNet) - A call by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to organise charity soccer games to raise funds for emergency aid for starving children in the Horn of Africa is not a marketing ploy to clean up its image, CAF boss Issa Hayatou has said.
CAF wants to use football's popularity in Africa to help raise funds to tackle the crisis through charity games organized by its national federations. The profits would be sent to aid groups responding to the emergency.
However, some media have viewed it as a public relations stunt by CAF to clean-up its bad image.
“What marketing operation are you talking about?” Hayatou asked a journalist at a news conference in Cameroon. “People are dying of hunger and illness and you speak of marketing,” he was quoted in Monday’s edition of Le Jour newspaper.
CAF was criticised for poorly managing the aftermath of a an attack by Angolan separatists on a bus that was transporting the Togolese national team to last year's Africa Cup of Nations.
Earlier this year several members of the CAF executive committee who are members of football's world governing body (FIFA), including Hayatou, were accused of accepting bribes to vote for some countries bidding to host the World Cups in 2018 and 2022. They have denied the allegations.
“Our brothers are dying and CAF has to react,” Hayatou added.
Hayatou said it would not be normal that organisations come from across the world to help 12 million Africans in distress and that Africans themselves do not contribute to provide assistance.
“When I see images of children whose ribs can be counted, dying of unbearable hunger do you think we can be indifferent to that?” Hayatou said. “It is in this spirit that we want to act”.
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