How I learned to stop worrying and love the World Cup

As a South African and a fan of football I was overjoyed when FIFA awarded my home country the rights to host the 2010 World Cup. As a football journalist with a thorough knowledge of the inner workings of FIFA and a curmudgeonly old pessimist to boot, I knew one thing for certain the moment they awarded us the tournament – we were about to get roughly buggered without the courtesy of foreplay.

The news that the taxpayer would stump up R2bn rand to construct new stadiums spread like the smell of fresh blood in a shark infested bay, and immediately the big BEE boys started circling. For those of you unaware of what BEE is, here’s an idiots guide. In theory BEE stands for Black Economic Empowerment, a noble concept designed to redress the imbalances caused by South Africa’s ignoble past. In practice however it boils down to this: If you have a friend in government, are connected to the ANC in some way or have the means of blackmailing a government minister, you are going to make a shitload of money without lifting a finger.

I’ll give you an example of how BEE works that’s not football related. In the Eastern Cape the provincial government’s health department recently awarded the contract to do the laundry for five large hospitals to the cousin of one of the board members who made the decision. This contract was worth R4.3million. Not a bad spot of business except for the fact that businessman Mthunzi Deliwe, who won the contract, did not own a single washing machine.

When a local newspaper went to inspect they found that he’d hired a bunch of local woman to handwash the bloody, disease riddled and germ infected laundry by hand, in cold water and without detergent. Needless to say this is no good as they were getting through about 100kgs of washing a day when they needed to wash 4 tons. Also, cold water does not sterilise anything.

Now back to the 2010 stadiums. There was an amazing amount of secrecy around the awarding of tenders to build these particular examples of that majestic African animal – the White Elephant. One thing was certain though, a few very rich government cronies were about to get even richer.

What worries me is the fact that we just might end up with stadiums where some ’shortcuts’ have been taken. Like not using cement and just balancing the bricks on each other.

And it wasn’t long before rumours of corruption and illegalities were rife and the government quietly released the news that the initial R2bn estimate was a touch low. The project would cost R9bn. What? That’s my tax money they’re happily pissing away on stadiums that are unnecessary to begin with. And this in a country where at least a quarter of the population don’t have adequate housing and as many as 40% are unemployed. It would be funny in a proto Orwellian way if it wasn’t quite so tragic.

“But it will generate so much money for the country,” we were told. I’ve yet to see any of this. Tourism is cited as the main beneficiary but, as a resident of Cape Town who has to fight his way through an undulating sea of blubbery European tourists snapping at their sunburnt wives every day of my life, more tourists is the very last thing I want.

But alas, it is far too late to moan and like the rest of the country I’ll just have to deal with rising property prices and the fact that I’ll have to sell a kidney every time I feel like drinking a beer in a bar somewhere.

What worries me these days is the fact that, with the World Cup less than two years away, it doesn’t look like anything’s being done. Sure the stadiums are coming along nicely but what about the other infrastructure investments we were promised. The trains, buses, trams, hovercrafts and teleporters to get the tourists and their fat wallets from point A to point B? I may not be an engineer but I know it takes more than 12 months to build a fully functioning public transport system.

What about the electricity shortage? Sure the stadiums will have generators but not everybody is going to be at the games. I can just imagine the brouhaha when people across the nation are gathered around television sets in bars and homes across the country for the inevitable penalty shootout only for the power to go out. Oh joy.

I won’t even mention the crime situation. OK I will. When the muggings, rapes and murders of football fans from around the world start reaching double figures even the most proficient government spin-doctor is going to find it difficult to take the traditional approach of: “Crime problem? What crime problem?”.

As a South African I fear that the World Cup will be a major embarrassment for my nation and a setback of gigantic proportions for the African continent as a whole. As a football journalist with an international media company on the other hand, I’ll get to go to as many games as I want for free. You read that correctly, free!

So I say what the hell, bring on 2010.

By Justin Zehmke

This article is from the fine folks at Football365.co.za – The home of the African football fan