World Cup fever humbug

The World Cup (of football, in case you're wondering) is nearly upon South Africa - the first African country ever to host this juggernaut of commercialisation and proxy patriotism. There aren't many public signs yet of popular enthusiasm for this spectacle - in the past couple of weeks the vendors at traffic-lights have started selling WC paraphernalia, and quite a lot of people have bought little SA flags to fly on their cars - but otherwise it seems to be only the official sponsors who are attempting to whip up emotions with lots of advertising. The football extravaganza appears to be a good reason to drink beer, make telephone calls, use your visa card, and so on - in other words to do everything you're usually exhorted to do, but even more so.

On the other hand, entire categories of people are not happy with the World Cup being held in SA, or rather they're not happy with the money being spent on it when SA has economic and social problems which in any objective scale are far more worthy of attention and investment. Recently the transport workers and municipal employees have been striking for better wages, while the national union of miners is threatening to follow suit and pitch the country into darkness just when the floodlights need to stay on for the football; and soldiers are threatening to abandon the borders and let thousands of foreigners stream across to gatecrash the party. An increasing number of communities have been staging "service delivery protests", in which they block roads, burn government buildings, stone the police, etc., to draw attention to the fact that they have limited running water, poor sanitation, no electricity in some cases, and generally a very low standard of living, partly due to the government's failure to provide basic utilities and housing. None of this is new, but all of these groups particularly object to the money being spent on the World Cup. As one young woman expressed it, "How can they find the money to build stadiums but not libraries?"

It might not be so bad if a case could be made that the new stadiums will provide jobs and generate income in the future, or will at least serve their communities in useful ways. But it's already clear that most of them will fail to cover their running costs when the WC is over; they're likely to go bankrupt pretty quickly. SA has so far spent some 2.6 billion dollars on new stadiums - ten in nine cities; only three of these have a local football club which could help to cover costs in the future. The stadiums in smaller cities don't even have transport infrastructures to get people to the gates when the World Cup is over - presuming that there'll be any events to go and see.

SA has made great efforts to be generous hosts for the WC, and the event itself will probably be a success - but six weeks from now it could well begin to strike home that an awful lot of money has simply been wasted in the name of national pride - and for a few games of football.