7 Sep 2009(Mon)

In the final part of our interview, I discussed the mood in South Africa leading up to next year’s World Cup with Marc Fletcher, a British doctorate researcher at Edinburgh University who recently spent 19 months investigating the football scene in Johannesburg.

 

Click here for Part 1

Click here for Part 2

 

I suppose the various debates won’t disappear until we see what actually happens and South Africa has had the chance to prove itself, but what’s the mood of the average local football supporter and indeed the average man, woman, and child in the street? Have other people’s concerns got to them, or are they just looking forward to putting on a party for the world to enjoy?

 

It depends what time of day you speak to them! It really does. Just after the Confederations Cup had finished, a lot of people I spoke to at the grounds and in both the townships and the wealthy northern suburbs of Jo’burg were pleased with how it had gone. There were no major incidents, it went quite well, FIFA gave the thumbs up, Bafana Bafana surprised us all and came fourth. So in that respect, euphoria is too strong a word, but people were pleased. But then, at other times, I’ve been speaking to people who think that South African football is so corrupt and so poorly run that it’s just going to be the same again on a world scale and we’re going to embarrass ourselves.

 

When I first started my research, I thought these viewpoints would be highly racialised, with white South Africans saying ‘the World Cup’s going to be a disaster’ and black South Africans saying ‘no, it’s going to be great, we’re going to show the world what South Africa is like’. But then, one time when I was at Kaizer Chiefs versus SuperSport United in Pretoria, there was a bit of an altercation and the (black) people I was with started accusing the metro cops of being racist because we were in Pretoria – the Afrikaner ‘heartland’. Speaking to these guys after that, they were all really pessimistic about the World Cup and how they were going to be embarrassed. And yet, speaking to some white South Africans at the Confederations Cup, they were really impressed with Bafana’s performances and how it had gone. So a lot of people are confused, they don’t know what to think. A lot of people hope that it’s going to be a success, and they can see that it could be a success.

 

But many others are fed up with Western perceptions of their country and of themselves. I digress, but take the issue of Caster Semenya, the 18-year-old 800m world champion. You read the papers in the UK, and it’s all ‘is she a man, is she a woman, we don’t know! She’s from this dodgy part of South Africa...’. And then you read the South African papers, and it’s an affront to all South Africans that we’re even questioning the gender of this woman. It’s Western neo-imperialism coming through again and sometimes, as a Brit who was in South Africa for some time, I was ashamed by some of the writing and some of the journalism.

 

Finally – are you personally looking forward to it?

 

Oh yes. It’s going to be amazing. I’ve already started to see Johannesburg transform – in some required areas – and things are happening. I want to see the culmination of all these efforts. It’s going to be a World Cup, I think, unlike any other.

 

But when they say it’s going to be an African World Cup, there are going to be elements which are distinctly South African and some that are distinctly African. Take the vuvuzela for example – that’s another interview for itself. But the only thing that I’m really unhappy about is that while FIFA, the government, and the local organising committee have marketed this tournament as a tournament for all Africans – all South Africans and all Africans – the vast majority of spectators will be Western Europeans. It will be the rich, it will be the First World.

 

And the guests of FIFA...

 

Exactly. In FIFA’s defence – and I don’t like to defend FIFA – they have released a certain amount of tickets for each game at vastly reduced prices for South African citizens only. So the poorer people have a chance of actually getting in the grounds and being a part of this. However, from experience, I know full well that that the people who have taken advantage of these cheap tickets are those South Africans who are a lot wealthier than you or I. But, you know, hopefully it will be great.