Submitted by Thandanani Mhlanga
OK, so there we were at Game, every race known to the southern hemisphere. A rare moment indeed — this is Nelspruit, after all, a place where the winds of change hadn’t fully reached yet at the time.
But there we were, washing detergent forgotten, glued to the different screens at the electronics department, all of us waiting for one announcement: to find out which country would be given the honour of hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup. As the announcement was made, race, differences and plastic bags were tossed aside for a celebratory moment I haven’t seen since.
Many made plans about how they’d use this rare opportunity to make money and maybe even become rich. Most celebrated the wealth of entertainment that would come to South Africa, the rare opportunities to meet celebrities and the boost to our economy. With the prospect of life-altering fortune and wealth for the country, it seemed like it couldn’t come soon enough.
But weren’t we a bit naive?
I found that out when I attended one of the Winter School debates in Grahamstown where Ashwin Desai was speaking on Who Will Be the Winners in 2010? He used the upcoming World Cup as a metaphor for the not-so-great implications of globalisation.
We’ve all been affected by it. We watch live soccer matches and award shows, and with the phenomena of the internet and related technologies, you can chat face-to-face to a friend in Tokyo while sipping cocoa at a pub in Durban. The truth of it is that the world is getting smaller and smaller, and nowhere is it more evident than in soccer.
I can’t recall ever seeing men, and women nowadays, so animated than when Manchester United or Real Madrid are playing a live match on TV. It’s the foundation for many a social life. Never mind that we’re hemispheres apart; globalisation has made people feel that they can relate to anyone from across the world. The bonds of nationalism are slowly fading. But at what cost?
According to Desai, the deteriorating standard of South African soccer is partly globalisation’s fault. Our players are recruited in their teens for European clubs and sold off before they can help develop their home-grown teams.
Then there’s the shattered 2010 dream that promised riches for many and jobs for the masses. Desai pointed to the loss that ordinary South Africans have suffered with their taxes being used to build sometimes unnecessary stadiums, which we’ll probably have no use for after 2010. We can’t even comfort ourselves with the knowledge that many underprivileged people got jobs. According to Desai, most are jobless since the completion of some of these stadiums. The truth is, the only one that will profit from the World Cup is Fifa.
We aren’t reading about this in our newspapers because, quite frankly, the illusion is too tempting. How will 2010 really make a difference to a township family headed by a single mother? We listen to what we’re fed, not realising that we’re pawns in the Fifa-plus-allies’ profit-making machine.
Even nationalism is so yesterday. Our soccer team are so shameful that we make jokes about them with our mates while drinking a toast to our favourite English teams — the very same teams that poach our players before we can even get our hands on them, with the result that we cannot build a strong enough squad.
Desai calls it “Europe worship mentality”, which basically sees locals taking anything European as gospel without question. We leave ourselves to be exploited with no chance to grow in the name of globalisation.
Desai’s intention at the Winter School was creating an open discussion, using soccer as a metaphor, about the inequality that makes small countries losers in the globalisation era. Take our crumbling clothing sector. China yearly dumps clothes worth billions of rands on our shores. These clothes are then sold at such a cheap price that our local manufacturers can’t compete.
Desai suggested that as Africans we use 2010 and the media attention it will draw to South Africa as a catalyst for protest. This protest should be aimed at confronting the fraud in large organisations that leads to inequality, and which is aided by globalisation. As the media we need to get real and start telling people the truth: all that’s Europe … so ain’t gold.
Thandanani Mhlanga is a student on the Future Journalists Project during the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown
In a global economy each country needs to play to its strengths. South Africa’s strengths are mainly around mining and tourism – the World Cup is therefore really really good news as it could provide a boost to the tourism industry.
The ENTIRE world will be focused on South Africa for a month – if you play your cards right you can advertise to the whole world that it is a great country to visit = more foreign cash into the economy.
On the flip side, if South Africa comes across as being anti-European, unwelcoming or dangerous, the month-long focus will have a negative impact on the economy.
From Bloomberg:
Soccer Ruling Body Has `Plan B’ for 2010 World Cup, AFP Says
By Alex Duff
June 29 (Bloomberg) — World soccer’s ruling body FIFA has a backup plan for the 2010 World Cup if a “natural disaster” affects host nation South Africa, Agence France-Presse reported, citing FIFA President Sepp Blatter.
Blatter told reporters in Vienna he had a “plan B tucked away at the back of a drawer,” AFP said, without giving details. He pushed aside concerns over security and possible stadium construction delays, AFP reported.
The backup plan would only be put in place after the June 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa, Blatter added before of attending today’s European Championship final in Vienna between Germany and Spain, AFP reported.
Last week, 2010 organizing committee Chief Executive Officer Danny Jordaan said at a press conference in Vienna that reports that FIFA had a contingency to stage the tournament elsewhere were false.
“It was a misconception in the world that there was a so- called Plan B,” Jordaan said June 24. “It’s a lack of understanding. I think it’s ignorance, frankly.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Duff in Vienna at at aduff4@bloomberg.net
Well written.
Our soccer problem is more basic than that – no promotion at school and club level.
Let the Chinese clothe the world cheaply. The poor need clothes. Our textile industry should go for elite niche markets, like Mandela type shirts.
The only way 2010 would have been an advantage is if it improved our future tourist industry. No hope now – not with our complicity in the Zimbabwean meltdown.
the losers are already the whole country.
it will get worse once 2009 gets here and people really start acting a fool.
that said, lyndall, you really don’t know how indifferent to political strife most tourists are, do you? the dominican republic has more international airports than south africa does. the reason? you can fly directly from new york or london or paris or rome to punta cana, la romana, or puerto plata, come out of the plane, and be whisked off the bus to your all-inclusive beach holiday resort, never knowing about the abject povoerty most dominicans live in.
no reason it can’t happen here. oh, wait. ACSA. because you can already fly into beira and not see a damn thing. vic falls as well.
but the point is you really haven’t travelled much, have you? franco built benidorm and you didn’t see the political repression there. british tourists *may* have known about it, but they still spent their money.
give the tourists their sealed off little reserves and you could have a country of morlocks and eloi and they wouldn’t care one bit.
I think our biggest World Cup problem is not that our team won’t do too well or that crime will embarrass us. I hope the team does well but the nepotism, politicking and corruption of their masters is against them. As for crime, I hope someone rouses from his slumbers in Pretoria Tshwane and starts to work out how to protect the citizenry and tourists in 2010 (and hopefully before and after).
However, the big problem I see is that the money spent on white elephant stadiums (with a nice cream off for the political elite) should have gone elsewhere. In particular it should have gone to the people of SA for housing, education, health, crime prevention and permanent job creation eg. service delivery. Let alone to provide better electrical power. The football could have been played using a few crafty and temporary additions to existing stadiums.
Once the money is spent, its gone (like Mugabe’s Lancaster House land re-distribution cash) and who knows when and where its wasted legacy will come back to bite us.
dont see much hope for this “future” journalist.
Mundundu
I hitch hiked and worked my way around Europe in the 1970s – including Spain, which was still recovering from the civil war where a generation had been maimed and torn apart. I hitched around Spain with a Spanish speaking American. We hitched on trucks, ate at the cafes of the working class and SPOKE to the people. We had one of the best meals in Spain on a fishing boat – by invitation of the crew. The trawlers catch much more than they can sell – and the fishermen use the surplus catch (eg baby lobster etc) for themselves. That was the best payella I have ever eaten.
Then I went to Amsterdam where I worked for a while, and lived in a hostel with Dutch Students, who were all totally in condemnation of the Spanish Government’s authoritarian policies, and all the Dutch students went to Yugoslavia, whose politics they approved of, for their holidays.
I asked them had they ever BEEN to Spain – and none of them had. What the Spanish had told me is that they had not given a damn who won the war – Fascist or Communist – as long as someone did and it stopped.
The next holiday they all went to Spain – to see for themselves.
The rich and insulated tourists like you speak about only go to the fancy hotels. Those kind of tourists will not fill the B&Bs and the self catering units and the Bazbuses. Those will be badly affected by the Zim meltdown.
My daughter spent her last holiday in Kenya – during the riots. Only herself, her partner, and one single man spent the first night in Kenya. All other tourists had cancelled – or joined the tour only when the Kenyan border had been crossed.
Globilization is a reality. Countries have two choices: 1)Start competing with the world and catch up where you have to. Invest in strengths and infrastructure and become effecient and productive 2)Block trade and become like North Korea, Cuba etc. Nations that have taken up the challenge and become effecient have become significantly richer while those Nationalists that strive for total equality have become poorer. The reason for China’s rapid growth is more capatalistic and free trade policies. South Africa can not remain a anti-globalist and snub it’s nose at policies atracting foreign investment. We have as fair a chance as any developing nation to grow and become effecient. If not we will become another basket case waiting for handouts. We are just another nation and should not expect special treatment, we have to earn our competitiveness.
um, i guess i have to put this in really racist terms, to make myself clear.
after the first time they almost didn’t let me back into a resort where my parents were staying when i was around 10 years old [because i'm black, see], i pretty much stopped going to touristy places where there were large numbers of white people, either as residents or as guests.
it’s been a very smart plan, because even when i’ve had to travel for business — meaning, some company is paying for my travel and picked the hotel — i’ve had the same problem.
if i had a penny for each time people looked at my passport, and then at me with a very puzzled look? [ie, you're black and spanish/french/italian/yoruba speaking. how do you have such an english name?] i really would be rich like you say i am.
it’s funny, i have actually done the bazbus from egoli to swatini. nice and comfy, and barely more expensive than the downtown joburg taxis, even though there were only 8 people going from nelspruit to mbabane. [swaziland customs is far superior to south africa's at ngwenya/oshoek, that's for sure].
when i’m in the rep dom, as it’s the touristy place with which i have the most experience, having lived there for a while, we would usually drive to the sealed compounds and tease the people in them for staying in a sealed compound. the best clubs are far away from the tourist traps anyway.
something you seem to be forgetting about the whole thing, lyndall, is that after 12-18 hours on a plane, not as many people will be interested in bed and breakfast places and you [and the 2010 organisers] seem to think. this placce IS FAR from everywhere. 4 hours on a plane from here only gets me to, what? windhoek? harare? lusaka? eish.
it’s likely that two sectors are going to see the most money during the world cup: the $$$ hotels and the people who give up their own houses for a couple of months. the middle sector, not so much. overall, the south african hospitality industry really isn’t all that; it’s really lacking. in addition, given the soaring price of jet fuel, there will be very few reasonable fly+stay deals. [you honestly don't think SAA, BA, and lufthansa are going to lower their prices for the world cup, do you?]
south africa really better hope mozambique, nigeria, ghana and gabon qualify [and that they get stuck in places like kimberley and PE to play their group matches], or the low to mid range hotels and b&bs will be in for a strong disappointment.
mundundu
I never said you were rich! I assumed from the beginning you travelled on business.
My cousin, who is comfortable, but not rich, goes somewhere different every year. He might spend the first 2 nights in a hotel to catch up on jet lag – then he hits the non-tourist, local buses, local homes. In Peru he traveeled on the local transport, and in Morocco. He takes only a backpack. And he is at retirement age already. Don’t forget us sixties hippies are not into the glam life – and there are still a number of us around.
My daughter and her best friend took the Bazbus up the coast one year and had a total ball. They were spoilt rotten and given the best accommodation everywhere – they were the ONLY South Africans on the bus! There were Germans, French, Americans, Australians! THOSE are the tourists we are going to loose!
People won’t come ONLY for the soccer. They will tour a bit as well – and they must want to come back, and recommend to others.
“This protest should be aimed at confronting the fraud in large organisations that leads to inequality”. Another protest?? How about getting off your butt and actually DO something. Rising oil prices WILL change the way the world does business. A shirt produced in China with landing costs at 15 Rand, could soon land at 25 Rand due to higher transport cost. SA could make them at 18 Rand.
Benzol
Good point EXCEPT that China subsidises so that ALL people have employment – or as close to as possible!
Thank you guys for all your comments. The good thing about this debate is that all the points are valid. I don’t believe in victims, whether individual or whole countries. Ashwin Desai has a point in that by becoming complacent and taken everything we’re told will be in our benefit as gospel is ignorant and detrimental to our nation. Globalisation can’t be avoided but we risk being swallowed up in the politics and only the poorest will suffer.
Every organisation’s aim is profit, let’s not forget that and that doesn’t make them the villains. China won’t stop dumping clothes on our shores because it serves them and we won’t say or do anything about because as long as it doesn’t affect our daily lives we don’t care. But it is all connected, globalisation at the expense of our economy and social well-being is not progress.
Thandanani
It is about time we helped ourselves and became competative in a global world instead of always looking for handouts.
Have you read “Capitalist Nigger”?
Yes I have read it and it is very insightful but again… not gospel. We should definitely be doing for ourselves instead of waiting for hand-outs but we must make sure there aren’t any ‘high powers’ that can sabotage us as individuals or whole countries. that said that book is one of my favourites because I believe mind-set determines a whole society’s success much more than them seeing themselves as victims. we definitely have a lot of work to do