Every time members of the African football family see Gianni Infantino and Fouzi Lekjaa together in Morocco, the same reaction sets in. It is not anticipation. It is the low-grade nausea of a loop that has been running for years: impotent media charades dressed up as a grand scheme to elevate African football.
The photographs are the product. The structural imbalance that produced chaos, incompetence, cronyism and the displacement of Africans from their own confederation is the thing that is never on the agenda.
Infantino and Lekjaa are a repulsive pairing. One is the Swiss-Italian conman and scammer who tried to park World Cup commerce with Donald Trump’s degenerate son-in-law Jared Kushner, paid himself an extra salary on top of millions, and now cuts ribbons and issues late apologies while confederations withdraw support.
The other is the Moroccan operator who has spent years treating CAF corridors as an extension of North African and Francophone control.
Together they stage the same scenes of stupidity: handshakes, flags, carefully framed statements about development. The African football family has seen the sequence enough times to know what follows. Nothing structural moves. The same faces remain. The same exclusions hold.
The statute that removed linguistic allotment of FIFA Council seats did not open the door to the best candidates. It closed it on the Anglophone and Lusophone associations of CECAFA and COSAFA while North African and Francophone numbers kept the seats.
Europeans and diaspora personnel now occupy a majority of CAF staff, displacing those who built the African game. Domestic leagues stay weak so talent can be extracted cheaply. Football manpower is converted into sycophants for hire, and the loudest praise-singer is the one who gets the next photo-op.
That is not elevation. It is maintenance of the imbalance.
The electorate will pronounce itself. This cannot continue as a way of life. Photo-ops while statutes create barriers for Anglophones, while Europeans are imposed inside CAF, while leagues are hollowed out, and while loyalty is measured by who kneels down and worships these hopeless and pathetic demagogues and despots, will stop being accepted as normal.
Infantino and Lekjaa can keep flying to Morocco. The African football family is no longer required to treat the pictures as progress. The loop is visible. The disgust is earned. The next decision belongs to the associations that have been told, repeatedly, that their place is outside the frame.
