Africa, don't settle for WC crumbs

There is a Bible story about a fearless, stubborn, “non-citizen” outsider-woman who demands the intervention of Jesus in the “small matter” of her child’s sickness. When Jesus rejects her request, she becomes so insistent that a heated debate ensues. During the debate she (her like and kind) are likened to “dogs” that do not have the “rights” of legitimate children. But even that does not deter the feisty outsider-woman whose child’s very life is at stake. If she is a “dog”, then she will settle for the “crumbs” usually reserved for “dogs”, she retorts. She will not leave empty-handed!

I am afraid a similar attitude may be required of Africa and South Africa in relation to Fifa and the Fifa 2010 World Cup.

The Fifa bread is taken. In township lingo, Fifa and those they have chosen (or should I say those with the wherewithal to buy the expensive Fifa business rights) have already “eaten”. Fifa virtually “auctions” the coveted World Cup event between competing country football associations and governments. As in any auction the bid is given to the “highest bidder”, despite the appearances of a democratic process at the end. The “highest bidder” is the country which will promise to meet all of the guarantees that Fifa requires and more. The bottom line is that the winning country must guarantee profit for Fifa. Such profit must be guaranteed without logistical gaffes and without infrastructural glitches. This is the reason for the stringent bidding requirements and subsequent monitoring and supervision after the award. All the better if the winning country can throw in a Nelson Mandela and a Desmond Tutu into the mix!

For various reasons, the (South) African award was a particularly precarious one to secure and once secured, a difficult one to hold down with confidence. The arduous journey began with the Charles Dempsey fiasco 10 years ago. Even after the 2010 bid was awarded to South Africa there were repeated and constant signs of mistrust and suspicion. These manifested in veiled and not-so-veiled threats of a “plan B”. The bad faith also showed with what sometimes appeared to be deliberate and calculated bad press for (South) Africa by influential media and football personalities.

But the African struggle for recognition and inclusion by Fifa is much older. For 80 years, not a single Fifa World Cup event was awarded to the continent. Indeed, in the beginning, the continent was not even thought worthy of direct representation in the Fifa World Cup. The marginalisation of Africa in Fifa is as old as the African struggle for inclusion and recognition in Fifa. This is a struggle worth continuing because Africa’s benefits from Fifa (and Uefa!) are grossly disproportionate to Africa’s (human) investment into these bodies. Africa — the largest of all football continents — must press for a better deal from Fifa.

Indeed, I wish to argue that (South) Africa has invested more into the Fifa 2010 World Cup than it is going to get out of it. The South African taxpayers have paid about R20 billion (and that is a conservative estimation I am told) for the World Cup. This is R20 billion that should and could have gone into the provision of the barest and most basic necessities for (South) Africans — more than 50% of whom live in the most abject poverty. I am talking of people who are not merely poor in terms of income — many have none whatsoever. I am talking of people who live in neighbourhoods without real streets, households without electricity, shanty homes without running water, communities without toilets and children without school buildings. That is the type and the level of poverty I am talking about.

Fifa should recognise the economic opportunity cost for a country such as South Africa. There are things Fifa could and should have been forced to do for (South) Africa. Their crazy rules in terms of which hawkers are not allowed within a certain distance from a stadium is a case in point. Why on earth have the African poor been prevented from making some money within the stadium precinct? And why have (local) South African authorities colluded with Fifa in harassing hawkers not only off the stadium precincts but off city streets as part of the so-called Fifa World Cup “clean up”? Why could the Fifa business-rights arrangements not be adjusted and tweaked to suit the (South) African conditions? Indeed, it should have been insisted that a part if not all of the profit Fifa made in the 2010 World Cup — which is a whopping 50% more than the profit they made in Germany — be ploughed back into a worthy (South) African cause. I am of course aware of Fifa’s One Goal Campaign aimed at mobilising funding for the 72 million children without access to schooling in the world. That is excellent advocacy work. I am talking about Fifa committing Fifa money — its 2010 profit to be precise (why not?) — to worthy African causes.

To return to the story of crumbs with which I opened this piece, it seems as if (South) Africa has to make do with the crumbs that fall off the Fifa table. What are those crumbs? Those crumbs are the so-called intangible benefits of hosting the World Cup; the celebration factor, feel-good factor, the social-cohesion factor, and the human-dignity factor. Fifa, Safa, the LOC and the local politicians will hand these over to you in a platter. They will blow them up in all sorts of ways. They will urge you to consume these intangibles. They will persuade you that this is really what the World Cup is all about. They will tell you that the feeling of ecstasy you had when Simphiwe Tshabalala scored the Bafana goal against Mexico is what the World Cup is about. They will urge you to remember the camaraderie between the fans of different African countries — and they will ask you to pretend that the South African xenophobic attacks of 2008 did not really happen. They will tell you that that moment is worth R20 billion. What they will not tell you is how much Fifa, Safa and the LOC made long before the first kick in the first Fifa 2010 game. They will urge you to take the intangible benefits but they will not tell you how much tangibles they are walking away with.

I must include among the crumbs, the infrastructure, the roads, the luxury train but I am not sure about the value of the stadiums. What are we going to do with these stadiums? They could become useful in service-delivery rallies, I suppose. It is unlikely that the Fifa World Cup will induce economic growth for South Africa and Africa. Not in these recessionary times. Like the outsider woman with whose story I begun this piece, it seems that we are not Fifa’s legitimate children. We are the “dogs” that deserve only the crumbs. We must make do with the crumbs that fall from the Fifa table. We must live and feed off this moment for a long time; stretch it, extend it, multiply it, magnify it, exaggerate it and exploit it as much as we can. The Fifa World Cup 2010 “moment” is all we have and all we will ever get. Alternatively, our associations can begin now to mobilise and press for a better deal from Fifa.