World Cup 5: The Rainbow Nation Effect

Several traditional soccer powers have now been made to look played-out and past it at the hands of arrivistes from the New World, East Europe and the Antipodes, England being among them. The Economist’s ‘Bagehot’ recently used football as a metaphor for the country’s place in the world, writing sadly that, ‘The team represents a people less certain than they were a few years ago that global greatness is their destiny and much less sure that they can afford it’. Across the Atlantic, the US strategic think-tank Stratfor suggested a little unkindly that England had an ‘aura as a perennial football power which obfuscates its World Cup disappointments’. That was before the US got its comeuppance against Ghana!

This African World Cup is also a moment for the Developing World to reflect on and readjust (mostly upwards) its own sense of where it stands in the geopolitical order. For South Africa, the pariah-to-host-nation miracle has amply compensated for the national team’s modest achievements on the pitch. This is a sentiment shared in the rest of Africa. South of the Sahara, hosting is winning.

And the World Cup might not be a mere flash in the South African pan. South Africa has hosted more global sporting events over the past decade and a half than any other country, and Durban is now considering a bid for the 2020 Olympics. But despite a sense of Africa rising, the vuvuzelas can quickly fall silent. Many South African fans walked out before the end of the Uruguay defeat. We’re still acutely conscious of being a G20 nation. The wry tactic of pulling one’s critics’ legs while pulling one’s own is revealing of this complex. The fast-food chain Nando’s illustrated it nicely with a printed paper napkin which proclaimed: ‘Many of our foreign visitors think we eat with our hands; let’s not disappoint them’. Similarly, we do like to ask our visitors if they’ve noticed any lions in the lobbies of their heart-of-darkness hotels recently!

The experience of visiting fans reflects this sometimes confusing mix of worlds. I spoke to a group of downcast England supporters early in the first round in Johannesburg’s fashionable restaurant quarter of Melville after their disappointing draw with the United States. Their crushed spirits had been soothed by the overall experience, which they described as ‘a carnival’ and ‘one big party’. Mandy and Claire said they were also struck by the fact that there was ‘no segregation’. After an anxious double-take in which I wondered whether we had slipped back into an apartheid time-warp, I realised that they meant between the US and England supporters!

They described the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in the small but booming platinum mining town of Rustenburg (the centre of Bishop Kevin Dowling’s diocese) as ’perfect’. Travel arrangements were, however, frankly chaotic. The first world concept of park and ride may take some time to become a reality in rustic Rustenburg. Another example of trying but not quite getting it right, was the fan-shop. One member of the party was an events-organiser who felt tempted to take it over from the charming but inept young people in charge, simply to educate them in the art of running a business.

Our British guests were surprised and delighted that alcohol was available during the match and that this caused no problems. ‘British football and drink don’t mix too well’, one informed me gravely as I endeavoured to look surprised. World Cups obviously include a more genteel class of fan than local club football. And the British and South African Police have been working effectively together to exclude violent elements. So, despite the lurid London tabloid reports of ‘machete-wielding youths’, the group said they ‘didn’t feel unsafe at all’, and that everyone had been ‘very, very friendly’.

The sense that we were dealing with a good number of middle-class fans was underlined when I met a Mexican family after Sunday Mass. The father, Pablo, a professor of history, asked me to recommend some books on the history of South Africa which he actually later purchased. They approved of Johannesburg as ‘almost European’ in the level of its infrastructure and technology except for the lack of easily accessible public transport. However, a new Rapid Transport system, a network of dedicated bus lanes based on a Latin American model, is set to be expanded. But again, in another symbol of the developed/developing world mix, this may have to be done in the teeth of opposition from the often violent minibus taxi industry.

The World Cup has already achieved some remarkable things. It has brought black and white South Africans together at a ‘black’ sport. It has drawn middle-class fans from across the world to watch a working-class game in a developing-developed country on the planet’s poorest continent. In has seen small and poor countries triumphing over economic and footballing giants. This ‘World Cup from the rainbow nation’, as the BBC calls it, suggests that there is more to the beautiful game than just FIFA’s profits.

First published in The Tablet www.thetablet.co.uk
If you've enjoyed this article, you can read the final one in the series at http://www.jesuitinstitute.org.za/en/node/235