Just last week, the JSE launched its Claim It campaign, urging South Africans to check if they are potential shareholders owed a portion of the R4.5-billion in unclaimed dividends.
For the campaign, the JSE appointed former Bafana Bafana and Leeds United captain Lucas “Rhoo” Radebe as the ambassador.
Radebe may have hung up his soccer boots 20 years ago, but he is still attracting sponsors like bees to honey. Because of his demeanor, character and immaculate image, the 55-year-old is still bankable, and is ageing like fine wine at the same time.
That at his age and so many years after calling it quits, the sponsors are still elbowing each other for his signature, says a lot about the Diepkloof-born retired defender.
This is all while his former teammates are struggling to keep the wolves away.
Discovery Bank and Vitality programmes, Lays crisps, Huawei, Betway, Adidas, and Enterprise are some of his partners and collaborators. Recently Radebe teamed up with Volkswagen as a brand ambassador of the VW Train 4 Life programme, an initiative which aims to empower young girls through football and life skills education.
If only those boneheads at Safa could stop blocking him from running for the presidency – yes, we know the good old, lousy story that he must get his hands dirty and join a local football association if he wants to be nominated.
The national association is struggling to get sponsors and needed to go to sports minister Gayton McKenzie for a donation to pay staff and Bafana players Christmas bonuses.
Here is a sponsors’ magnet right next to you who has expressed his desire and dream to one day lead Safa as president, because he believes he can steer the association in the right path and give back to the sport that has given him so much.
But because people are threatened by his popularity and the respect he commands in South Africa and Europe, the gangsters at Safa House would rather keep him away and as far as possible from their fiefdom. He will cramp their style because he won’t be jostling for honorariums, daily allowances and loans.
In fact, this column was never about Safa and its shortcomings, it was about giving Radebe his flowers while he is still alive.
Rhoo’s success on the soccer pitch overshadowed his social and charitable initiatives, including the Starfish charity for HIV and Aids orphans and the Reach for a Dream Foundation – for which the University of Cape Town conferred an honorary Master of Social Sciences degree on him in 2005.
He has also served as the Fifa ambassador for the SOS Children’s Villages and in 2000 he received Fifa’s Fair Play Award for his efforts to rid football of racism.
One of the awards the lanky defender scooped in the English Premiership was the10 Seasons Award for Contribution to the Community in 2003.
The accolade was part of the Premier League’s 10 seasons celebrations, which looked back and recognised the player who did the most to use his position as a professional footballer to make a difference to people’s lives in communities on two continents.
Other players who were nominated for the award included John Barnes, Dion Dublin, Gary Mabbutt, Chris Powell, Niall Quinn, David Unsworth and Tommy Wright. The following year he was voted 54th in the Top 100 Great South Africans.
Now we understand why, after all these years, Radebe is still so profitable and could just be the tonic Safa needs to bring back the truckload of sponsors, the corporate world’s endearment, the public’s confidence, and trust.
