The 2010 World Cup -- nadir rather than zenith for SA

Last night was enlightening but also saddening in underscoring so many of our doubts.

We had some of my son and daughter-in-law’s friends and associates over at our place in Alexandria, US. A small but varied and egalitarian group ranging in ages from 55 to 28: British, American, from New Zealand, Chinese and South African. I was the odd one out on four fronts: (1) the oldest by 15 years, (2) the least travelled by a wide margin, (3) I’ve only been in the US for two weeks and (4) I no longer play golf.

I now think there were other distinctions too, but they weren’t as obvious.

We talked about golf (of course), about my gorgeous grandson, about dogs and the difficulties of caring for them in apartment complexes, the latest Liam Neeson film, Taken, rugby, Nelson Mandela, Israel and Gaza, crime, conscription, Barack Obama, Iraq and Afghanistan, cricket, sub-Saharan Africa, conquering addictions and, of course, my homeland and its multiplicity of crises and whether the 2010 Fifa World Cup will bring about anything of value.

Everyone had a peculiar and idiosyncratic perspective on these and the other tumbling kaleidoscope of things happening around us. I was hypnotised by views on a honeymoon in Ireland during the height of Irish Republican Army bombings, gobsmacked to learn about actual research visits to Afghanistan and Iraq with US soldiers, amused by the none-too-glamorous side of guarding high-level Capitol lobbyists, educated on the possibilities of China forcefully taking Taiwan (without a navy? Nil) and the nature of New Zealand’s 10 000-strong military capacity and intrigued by the differences between America’s involvement in Vietnam and its current involvement in the Middle East.

But the conversations kept coming back to South Africa. Why has South Africa failed so abominably to lead the continent? Why has its infrastructure crumbled to the point where tourists only want to fly in and fly back out again? How could it have allowed Robert Mugabe to destroy Zimbabwe? Why have we tolerated the erosion of all the unification and reconciliation brought about under Mandela? Why do we pussy-foot around crime the way we do? How could we have been so globally irresponsible as to let HIV/Aids get so out of control? How is it possible for “so great a nation – the greatest in Africa” to become as dismally shattered and divided and parochial and corrupt as it is perceived to be?

And, of course, the trillion-rand question: What’s going to happen when the world arrives on SA’s doorstep for the World Cup next year?

We all know there are no simple answers to any of these questions. There’s no point whatsoever in calling their validity into question — they are the prevailing, ubiquitous and very, very real perceptions that exist outside of the isolation wards in which our authorities cocoon themselves. The questions, comments and criticisms carry no malice. Only astonishment. Astonishment at how out of touch our leaders are, how determinedly arrogant, how doggedly ignorant the masses, how we insist on trying to drive forward with glazed eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror, how morally, ethically, socially, economically and politically corrupt we are.

To my utter amazement, I found myself again and again having to take apologist stances, leaping to defend that which I so consistently criticise — if only to manhandle conversations back to balance. I found myself thinking: shit, the perceptions about SA over here in Washington are far worse than are ours back home!

Hell, I even tried some of the ANC’s own scrap-yard cliches about poverty, the legacy of apartheid and colonialism and the First World-Third World chasm we straddle. And each tatty excuse plunged headlong into the great kite-eating tree of truth. As they always do.

These were not redneck rejects from a Jerry Springer show or backwood bumpkins from Moosebreath, Nebraska. These were people with genuine interests in SA. These were multiple graduates whose jobs involved international interactions, high-level security clearances, hospitality, diplomacy and analysis. These were people who included senior hotel managers who’ve worked in most places in the world, bodyguards who travel globally interacting at the covert crux of international security, specialist advisors to the Pentagon and the mightiest military machine in the world.

The consensus view by midnight was that it’s “such a pity” — so much promise squandered, so many possibilities dead or terminally ill. And that the World Cup will indeed happen, but it will be a mere wispy disappointing shadow of the success it could have been, that we lack the capacity to protect our visitors, or organise “cracker events” or even muster a plausible national team.

Then came the bombshell observation — that rather than being the zenith of our 16 years of “democracy”, the World Cup will be its nadir, a developmental dip so frightening that it will galvanise us to get serious about progress.

“It’s taken us (the US) a long time to hit the low point we’re in right now, but we’re working to get out of it. And working as one nation like we haven’t since Pearl Harbour. Maybe the failure of the World Cup will unite you (South Africans) as we are doing now to begin the climb to where you should be; a serious player on the world stage and not the rather tragic also-ran the rest of the world sees,” said the Pentagon analyst.

On a certain level Kgalema Motlanthe’s State of the Nation address last week presages this precisely. His oft-repeated phrase of “hope and resilience”, though tawdry and insubstantial, resonates throughout the speech (a very shoddy attempt at ANC-tripartite alliance propaganda, ill-conceived, ill-constructed and ill-delivered as it was) like a mantra. It’s what the country needs. I share that hope and believe we are possessed of fearsome bounce-backability. Ironically, the greatest threat to that “hope and resilience” is the ANC itself and the horrifying probability of Jacob Zuma prancing about in presidential splendour.

Where will we find our Barack Obama?