World Cup 4: The Fifa Food-Chain

‘Is South Africa an independent country?’ A disarming question from a perceptive Mexican fan suggesting there is no independence without it being financial. To illustrate, he added that after 400 years many banks and businesses in his country are still Spanish. The commercial grip that Fifa has exercised over this World cup adds urgency to his question. Indeed some commentators have used the term ‘colonisation’, albeit temporary, to describe Fifa’s extraordinary level of control. Whose needs are being met around here? is a question worth asking as sovereignty seems suddenly ceded to a globalised bureaucratic behemoth.

A rather ‘red in tooth and claw’ image of a capitalism that brooks no real competition comes to mind. In a game reserve in Botswana I once saw a pack of hyenas run down and kill a warthog which they devoured in ten minutes flat amid much yelping, crunching of bones and tearing of flesh. Outside this inner circle of predatory eating-machines, hovered an outer ring of timid and wary jackals, which would dart forward every now and then and seize small scraps of the rapidly-diminishing carcass. Eventually the strongest or smartest hyena ran off with the warthog’s head.

Let’s consider the unfortunate warthog as the World Cup ‘bacon’ and Fifa and its official sponsors and other big interests who muscle in unofficially as members of the hyena pack. The official sponsors like Budweiser, not greatly associated with either soccer or South Africa, who use the slogan ‘Budweiser United’, or Adidas proclaim themselves ‘supporters of the national team’ but charge £20 for a shirt invite a certain cynicism. However the expensive shirts have done a brisk trade and plenty of beer is being consumed at three times the usual price.

Then there are the ‘unofficials’. It’s ironic that some of the big companies which have given Fifa nightmares over so-called ‘ambush-advertising’, merely pose as the underdogs or the marginalized jackals. The Bavaria Beer Company which ambushed a match using shapely Dutch girls in orange mini-skirts acquired local and international publicity and sympathy thanks to Fifa’s heavy-handed response. Some of the girls were arrested and had to be bailed out for sums which even murderers in this country do not have to stump up. Bavaria Beer and Nike - also not an official sponsor but which has taken over the largest skyscraper in Johannesburg and draped it in advertising - are no underdogs, but rather part of the pack and even arguably like the smarter, stronger hyena which makes off with the first prize of the warthog’s head. Some advertising analysts suggest that these underdog-posers have done much better than the official sponsors judged on the free attention they have received on the internet.

Those further down the food-chain can get the scraps and are happy to do so, like the actual jackals. Take Bheki, a student of communications at the University of Johannesburg who works as a runner for the commentary team. There’s very little money in this but it is valuable work experience and an excellent opportunity to meet seasoned local and overseas journalists. It’s a useful foot on the job ladder. It’s much harder for Robert who comes originally from Limpopo Province. He has few skills and his English is limited, so he’s content to leave his extended family in Soweto several hours before each game for the possibility of work as a waiter at the stadiums. As many overseas fans have discovered, June is a freezing winter month on the Johannesburg highveld, but Robert is obliged to work in a thin white official shirt for his temporary ‘Mc Job’. One would have thought that there would be popular resentment at this exploitation but in fact Bheki and Robert, like most South Africans, are delighted that the World Cup has come to their country and that they are able to benefit from it, if only marginally.

Whether we like it or not, World Cup economics mirror the economic arrangements in post-apartheid South Africa, where almost everyone is better off, but some much, much more so than others. All this can leave one with a depressing sense of how impossible it is to compete with Fifa and Co. However, perhaps one can take some consolation in another, less dramatic image than the hyena-fest - the humble dung-beetle, which bemused some overseas observers in the opening ceremony. Was it just included to suggest a creature that knows how to dribble a ball rather well? I like to think it was inadvertently saying something a bit more defiant and hopeful.

The dung-beetle may be pretty low down on the food-chain and an object of some hilarity, but it’s at home in this tough environment and plays an absolutely essential role within it. Against all odds it gets by. The dung-beetle certainly cannot compete directly with the hyena-pack but it will still be dribbling away and surviving when all the fancy exploitative economic ‘strikers’ have long departed.

First published in The Tablet www.thetablet.co.uk
If you enjoyed this article, the next in the series, World Cup 5: The Rainbow Nation Effect, is at:
http://www.jesuitinstitute.org.za/en/node/232