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South Africa World Cup

‘Fick Fufa’: Was it Good for You, Sepp?

The ghastly strong-arming of a still grieving Nelson Mandela to attend the finale. The extra-constitutional courts and wildly disparate punishments for locals versus tourists. £2.5b in tax-free profit. Etc. “Fifa’s MO is to ensure the country’s statute book has been made comfortable for its arrival, take over almost entirely for the period of time needed to siphon out the money, before pulling up anchor and moving on to the next host organism. Naturally, we all wish Brazil the best of luck – but the time has surely come to ask who regulates the regulator. Perhaps it’s one for the UN, assuming Fifa isn’t about to take its first seat on the security council.” (Marina Hyde/The Guardian)

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Is the World Cup Forestalling Xenophobic Violence?

Assaults by South Africans against thousands of immigrants and refugees there from other African countries (such as Zimbabwe) have died down during the World Cup — but the targets of that violence fear matters could heat up again after the tournament is over. A cold irony, since South Africans found refuge in countries like Zimbabwe during apartheid. (David Gutnick/CBC-FIFA World Cup Blog)

The Makana Football Association and the Idea of Justice

What started as a way to for prisoners on Robben Island to get exercise became an eight-team league with a governance body and due process for those charged with infractions — an anomaly in South Africa at the time for blacks, and one that made a deep impression on those involved. “When we left the island, it was very clear that South Africa was changing, and that football was going to be important.” says one prisoner. “South Africa had to come into the fold, but it needed transformation, and football kept people going during that time.” (Jonathan Wilson/FourFourTwo)

Read of the Day: Birth of a Nation

The South Africa of Roger Cohen’s youth was about denial — of everything to blacks, and of the possibility of a peaceful end to a monstrous system. Which is what makes this World Cup so wonderful, despite the 40% of South African homes without flush toilets and 25% unemployment — “it is the affirmation of a nation’s miraculous (if incomplete) healing.” This is not Zimbabwe. This is not the DRC. The reaction to a 0-3 loss to Uruguay was “dignified, peaceful: the intangibles of nationhood.” (Roger Cohen/The New York Times)

Ordinary Problems, Ordinary Country

South Africa’s men’s national team has just one white player, Matthew Booth — but the country is leagues ahead in terms of racial tension of the 1995 of “Invictus,” when its rugby team won that sport’s World Cup with one black team member. “Today South Africa has lost its epic singularity; its problems, while pressing, are humdrum ones shared by many countries around the globe: fighting poverty, corruption, crime, disease; strengthening a rickety public education system.” The triumph of the country, in an important sense, has been to become absolutely ordinary. (John Carlin/The Wall Street Journal)

South Africa: The Decision to Take a Step

It’s obvious that the World Cup won’t benefit South Africa economically and has diverted public investment into stadia rather than the commonweal. But was economics the only potential benefit? “South Africa is world class, says the writer Njabulo Ndebele, because it talked its way out of civil war into democracy and has kept talking since. There’s a constant national conversation in which everyone forever disagrees with everyone else, but in which everyone of every colour is respectfully heard.” And the World Cup symbolizes that agency. (Simon Kuper/FT.com)

Reads of the Day: Your Daily World Cup Orgy of Fearmongering

If all goes well in South Africa…well, there’s a phrase few dare write these days. Tim Vickery says the World Cup should be solidifying the South African youth soccer system…but it could also be the trigger for national insolvency, as the Athens Olympics were for Greece. The LRB’s R.W. Johnson reports there isn’t enough electricity or VIP seating to go around. Health reporter Donald McNeil warns that, if you go, worry about tick bites, measles, diarrhea, AIDS, flu, gang rape, sunstroke and (of course) your hearing. And Jim at Match Pricks says: Won’t this just be the best month ever?

World Cup Forecast: A 90% Chance of Diving

In the knockout stages of the World Cup, the point is not to lose — and those games (especially in the cold of a South African winter) could look like last week’s parked bus at the Camp Nou. Like Mourinho’s well-drilled squads, teams will above all protect themselves against counterattack. Look for stalemates, tight refereeing, and lots of diving. (Tim Vickery/FIFA World Cup Blog)

Just How Much is FIFA Ripping Off South Africa?

FIFA’s usual crony capitalism has sunk to the depths of heat-vent worms for this year’s World Cup, charges a new book by South African and British journalists. Non-competitive bids for contracts, inflated stadium and light rail costs, price-fixing for infrastructure materials, and an estimated take of up to $4 billion are all at the expense of South Africa’s government and people. (Jeré Longman/NYTimes.com)

Going Platinum

With eight weeks to go before the World Cup, England’s South African headquarters are far from built — and far from anything, in the Royal Bafokeng Nation in the middle of North West province. Why? One word for you, son: Platinum. (Owen Slot/The Times)

Read of the Day: 40,000 Sex Slaves at The World Cup?

40,000 Sex Slaves at the World Cup? That’s the news on NBC, in the Telegraph and other MSM outlets — massive human trafficking into South Africa to sexually service fans at the World Cup. Where have we heard this report before? How about Germany 2006, the 2004 Athens Olympics, and the 2000 Games in Sydney? There is absolutely no evidence for these claims — and yet the estimates of enslavement double with each new event. (Brendan O’Neill/Spiked)