PA PhotosSouth Africa's pre-World Cup joys have been cruelly tarnished

If South African sport were a fountain, it would sprout emotion instead of water, for it has often been the source of great sentiment.

During the dark days of Apartheid, it was used as a tool of division to deny the majority of the population the right to the dignity equal participation brings. Afterwards, briefly, it was used to reconcile. The 1995 Rugby World Cup and 1996 African Nations' Cup (ANC) were nothing more than scant bandages over a sceptic wound.

Since then, South Africa have scaled some heights, but grown smaller too. Their cricket team is ranked number one in the world, but they have failed to field a black African in Test matches in more than a year. They are one of only three countries to have lifted the William Webb Ellis trophy twice, but rugby too has not transformed sufficiently. Although they return with too few medals from every Olympic Games, they are default hosts for many major tournaments. ANC 2013 is one of them.

With Libya recovering from revolution, there was thought to be no better replacement than South Africa. Ticket sales have been slow and some of the heavyweights, like Cameroon, Egypt and Senegal, will be missing, although the marketers are trying to create hype similar to that of the 2010 World Cup.

It's not entirely similar. And now we can say: "Thank goodness for that". The euphoria that gripped the nation before Africa's first World Cup was in part due to the form of the host team. Bafana Bafana had not lost in 12 matches and earned big wins over the likes of Thailand and Guatemala. A squad that struggled to strike in the past were netting four and five times. Expectation grew.

Maybe the second round was not a bridge too far. Maybe they would be able to put a few past the two former world champions, Uruguay and France, and the gutsy Mexican side they were grouped with. Maybe, maybe, maybe dreams would come true.

They did not. No matter how many songs brave Bafana Bafana sang before they walked out of the tunnel to face Uruguay, they did not score the goals they needed to advance. They were hailed as heroes who went down fighting. Now we know they were never good enough.

Those goals that came out of nowhere actually came out of someone's pocket. Penalties can be wrongly awarded because of human error, but it seems the ones that were thought dubious against Colombia (and others) may well have been exactly that. The FIFA report suggests the convicted match-fixer Wilson Raj Perumal's fake organisation Football 4U supplied the referees who awarded the questionable spot-kicks.

I was at that match and inbetween an argument with a volunteer about finding my seat - the so-called do-gooder threatened me with violence. I remember thinking that something was off. The first penalty was retaken because the official believed the Colombian goalkeeper had moved too early. It seemed a harsh decision. Maybe it was deliberately harsh.

Zimbabwe have just come out of one of the largest fixing scandals in football. Perumal was involved there as well and 98 people's footballing careers -some players, some administrators - have ended because of it. At least it does not seem South African players were involved.

Instead they, just like ordinary South Africans, were duped. If the evidence we have before us now is to be believed, certain administrators hoped for a string of positive results to create an illusion that Bafana Bafana had improved to the point that they were worthy of competing with the best in the world.

It raises questions about why more had not been done to ensure South Africa would be better prepared. It makes us wonder if the administrators realised too late that the hosts would verge on the embarrassing and had to create a mirage about how able the team really was. Why wasn't a different coach sort? Why weren't the development structures better nurtured? Why were the administrators so desperate?

Those who have been suspended, including the president and chief executive, are not necessarily guilty of anything. Good governance demands that they are put on leave while investigations are carried out. So far, the administration has done the right thing in asking FIFA to investigate and act on the findings of the report.

We also know that someone in South African football has done a Hansie Cronje. The former South African cricket captain is remembered only in some blinkered circles for his feats on the field. In the rest, he is rightly talked about as a crook and a cheat. What a tragedy it will be when Bafana Bafana's administrators are mentioned in the same breath.

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