Somewhere over the Rainbow nation 2010

South Africa continues to astonish the world with its generous helpings of the double whammy: The wondrous and the horrendous, the sublime and the tragic, the awesome and the awful.

Consider the star-studded concert organised on 10 June to celebrate the arrival of the 2010 World Cup in Africa; a feast of ‘African’ music was on the programme in Soweto’s shining new Orlando Stadium from international stars such as Shakira, Alicia Keys, The Black Eyed Peas, Angélique Kidjo, to name but a few of some eleven acts lined up at great expense by Fifa to mark its first ever global soccer event held on the African continent.

For some reason, it did not occur to the organisers to include some of South Africa’s own artists until the latter protested and threatened to boycott the concert via their union. Fifa finally relented at the last minute under pressure from the union and a furious ministry of arts and culture and included three South African items, but not in the main programme already sold to the international TV networks and scheduled to go on air at 8pm local time. The S outh African artists were allowed on stage in the early part of the show but were given no international TV coverage and no fees.

So much for the home-grown African touch from the host country that was promised from the famous Johannesburg township, Soweto (a name made up under the apartheid regime out of the acronyms for SOuth WEst TOwnship) most of whose inhabitants never made it to the concert where the tickets cost between ZAR450 and ZAR1500 , the equivalent of an average black worker’s monthly salary.

According to Time magazine (June14-21), the real stars of the Orlando Stadium show were supposed to have been Mandela and the late Siphiwo Ntshebe, a 36-year-old tenor whose ‘audacious journey from a township choir to a music scholarship in London and a five-album deal personified Africa’s transformation’…(we wish!). In gushing language, the magazine claims that the young singer was coaching the 91-year-old Madiba for their planned duet rendition of the ANC hymn, Nkosi Sikele Afrika, the music of which, by the way, constitutes the national anthems of Tanzania (adopted in 1961), Zambia (adopted in 1964) and the new South Africa (adopted in 1994). Tragically, says Time, this was not to be; Ntshebe caught acute bacterial meningitis and died in hospital on 24 May.

Nevertheless, continues Time in its prophetic prose, ‘on June 11, a billion people will tune in to watch the biggest event in the world-and find an African team about to play an ever more African game on the edge of Africa’s most famous township. And then the greatest man on earth will speak of hope.’

Back in the real world, South African jazz maestro Hugh Masekela said the World Cup was a ‘passing event’ and that he was more concerned with life in South Africa after it was all over. The one local act that the organisers did include in the line-up of the concert was the ubiquitous archbishop, Desmond Tutu, whose showbizz talents were in full flow as he pranced around the stage at the end in full Bafana Bafana colours in obvious ecstacy. It was his sacred duty to boom out the commercial at the end of the show by reminding the audience that “all this” had been made possible only because of Mandela.

The next day, the real South Africa asserted itself when we learnt that a little girl of 13 had died in a car crash while returning home from the concert. The driver, the son of a family friend, was found to be heavily drunk, and was immediately charged with ‘culpable homicide’ but two days later, the police announced that the case had been ‘taken off their books’. The case against him will be heard in court at the end of July, well after the World Cup circus will have departed. The little girl was Zenani, the great granddaughter of Nelson Mandela and his former wife, Winnie.

The Mandela family, in their grief, retreated from public view and ‘the greatest man on earth’ was not on stage on 11 June to officiate at the opening ceremony of what could be, according to Time magazine, ‘the most sublime of African revolutions.’ (Football as a model for liberation from racist rule!)

The grandiose claims being made by Fifa’s local and international officials and by some politicians about the football World Cup being Africa’s many-splendoured chance, its royal road to revolution, freedom, democracy, unity, national identity, prosperity and modern western civilisation is mind-boggling. South Africa’s special grand destiny was already spelt out by the-then president Thabo Mbeki in his letter to Fifa offering to host the World Cup; ‘In the name of our continent, we wish to organise an event which will send waves of confidence from the Cape to Cairo.’

Danny Jordaan, the head of Fifa’s South African organising committee, claimed that by delivering the Cup, ‘we will have finally dismissed the idea created by apartheid that there are greater and lesser human beings. We will be ready to take our place in the world.’ Archbishop Tutu, not to be outdone when it comes to matters of destiny, declared recently to the press that the nation deserved to pat itself on the back ‘because we were ready not only in terms of infrastructure but also in terms of self-confidence and self-esteem. Furthermore, the international media is awash with positivism about us. They really do see us as the beautiful butterfly we have become.’

President Zuma, reading from the same script, claimed that the Cup was a ‘catalyst for development and jobs’ and that for the first time ever in 16 years of freedom and democracy, ‘we see black and white celebrating together.’

The prize for over-the-top exaggeration must surely go to Time magazine (dated as above): ‘Today, South Africa’s World Cup preparations give some hope that soccer might once again transform not just the nation but the world’s idea of Africa.’ The fact that billions of dollars have been spent on building airports, roads and ten stadiums explains the confidence and optimism coursing through South Africa and the whole continent. ‘The dark continent is the past, Africans are saying. The future is full of goals.’

Try telling all this guff to the shack-dwellers, soda and ice-cream sellers, souvenir stall-holders and other small traders who have had their homes and livelihoods destroyed and their goods confiscated by the police for plying their trade in townships and areas suddenly declared ‘restricted zones’. One of the privileges of playing host to Fifa consists of accepting its diktats on trade and commercial rights in the immediate surroundings of all World Cup sites. Fifa has exclusive rights over who sells what in a one kilometre area around these stadiums and only those holding special Fifa permits can operate in these restricted zones. However, Fifa does not give permits to South African street vendors and ladies who have been selling local food in the townships for years but to McDonalds, Budweiser and the like which have been granted exclusive licenses for the duration of the tournament.

The BBC correspondent in Durban, Pumza Fihlani, described the scene at the city’s new futuristic Moses Mabhida stadium in this way:

‘The new US$450m arena was named after an anti-apartheid activist and hero of the black working class but some South Africans say his memory is being trampled on by people who are using the stadium to harass the poor. According to Johannes Mzimela, who sells ice cream for a living, ‘they should have named this stadium after PW Botha – not Moses Mabhida, our father. It just makes a mockery of what he represented.’

Those ordinary South Africans who were given temporary jobs like security staff at the stadiums soon walked out on learning that they were not getting the wages they had originally been promised. As a result, it is the police that have replaced this staff at the major sites in Cape Town, Jo’burg, Durban and Port Elizabeth – at what extra cost, no one yet knows.

On 16 June, as the country marked the 34th anniversary of the Sharpeville shootings by the apartheid police, thousands marched in Durban to denounce Fifa and the government (to the chants of Get out Fifa Mafia) for spending millions of rands and of mistreating the locals in a country (in Africa) where 40 per cent of the population lives on less than US$2 a day. The government has spent at least US$4.3 billion in preparing for this event; Fifa has made much more than that in the four years since the decision to hold the 2010 series in S.Africa.

In order for the new South Africa to take the ‘place in the world’ that Danny Jordaan dreams of, the ANC government gave into every Fifa demand: Exemption from VAT, income tax, custom duties, levies on the import and exports of goods belonging to Fifa and its affiliates. Government guarantees were granted to broadcast rights holders, media and spectators and for the unrestricted import and export of all foreign currencies into and out of the country. Guarantees also extended to ownership of all media, marketing and intellectual property and complete exemption from any claims against Fifa arising out of its management of the tournament.

As for the ‘Get Fifa Mafia cry’, the daily paper, Mail and Guardian, last week obtained a high court decision to force the local Fifa organisers to provide information about the tender process followed (or not) in the context of these preparations. The newspaper had to go to court as a last resort since its calls for this information were being ignored by the local Fifa partners. The paper’s representatives said their purpose was to find out who had really benefitted from the vast array of commercial contracts engendered as a result of Fifa activity in the country.

Since 1994, post-apartheid South Africa has been the subject of a merciless and relentless campaign to turn itself into an African Disneyland with the help of the usual experts from the planet of the free-marketeers and re-writers and trash-merchants of African history. Unfortunately, tragically some would say, many of its leaders and its newly rich have been seduced by professional wizards of tosh and their scribblers in the press. But there are quite a few natives who remain lucid.

Against the drone of infantile ‘positivism’, butterflies and patronising comments on South Africa’s continental grand mission to sort out the place from Cape to Cairo, there is, for example, the lone voice of Hugh Masekela who says, ‘After 350 years of history, I don’t think the World Cup can change the lives of South Africans too much.’

Meanwhile, let the fat lady sing one more time…

Somewhere over the rainbow,
Footballs fly,
Fifa is milking a fortune,
Why, tell me, why can’t I?

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* J. Mogwe
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