World Cup 2010: A reflection

So the World Cup is finally over – the memory of the final game now forever linked with East Africa with the grisly bombings in Uganda that resulted in 76 deaths.

Our hearts go out to the families of those murdered and injured in the bombings.

A lot could be, has been and will continue to be said about the bombings.

But I do not want, today, to focus on them.

Or the security risks posed to all of us by Al Shabab’s hold on southern Somalia.

Or even the human rights risks now posed to people of Somali descent who may be unjustly targeted by the necessary regional response to Al Shabab.

I want to go back to the World Cup.

Terrorism, counter-terrorism, the constitution and parliament’s remuneration can hold.

We all deserve a break; the World Cup provided much-needed and welcome relief from the insanities that mar our day-to-day existence.

To confess: I never played soccer growing up.

My knowledge of the game is rudimentary at best.

But that doesn’t shame me, certainly not when by far the bulk of the game’s global audiences swill back beer – looking anything but athletic – and clearly enjoy the game only in that ironically vicarious masculine sense.

That is, simply knowing about the game – its players, their every move and their team’s every move back to the beginning of time – somehow instils the sense that they could be players too.

Never mind that they haven’t kicked a ball about since high school and would probably keel over huffing and puffing if they even tried.

No worries, even though it annoys me that there’s no female team sport that’s watched to the same extent (presumably for the same reason: that female team sports obviously do not provoke that same sense of vicarious masculinity).

Irony and annoyance aside, I watched the World Cup – not to live vicariously, but because I find the social dynamics around it endlessly interesting.

Not just in terms of masculinity (and no, I don’t mean admiring the players’ super-fit bodies), but in terms of race and power in the world, and what the game shows us about differences in access to power.

I’m usually unrepentantly racially nationalistic in terms of whom I support – generally shifting loyalties from any sub-Saharan African team to any North African team, to any southern team (Brazil!) and, finally, if the worst comes to worst, the European team with the most black players.

This World Cup, however, clearly I had to shift my support strategy.

The sub-Saharan African teams went down like flies – but Ghana, at least, did not disgrace us by letting the Americans win. (The Americans and soccer? Please!)

The North Africans were nowhere to be seen. Brazil went out. (What?)

And the European teams with black players fell one after the other – England, France, Italy. It was all very strange.

But France’s response was hilarious: the captain asked to see the president.

The president met with the entire team.

One would have thought, upon reading the French newspapers, that the French had lost a world war; patriotic angst about the state of the nation prevailed.

The only spark of humour in the whole fiasco was provided by a French entrepreneur who imported 50,000 of the now infamous vuvuzelas from China and made a small fortune.

He said he wished he’d imported a million – and planned to do so in the future.

Not only for football but because, as he put it, the French ‘love to strike’ and the vuvuzelas would be perfect accoutrements for demonstrators! I laughed.

Which brings us to the vuvuzelas themselves – that oh so African touch to the World Cup, made in China like so many oh so African things nowadays.

I liked the Germans because they had a mixed-race player – half German, half Ghanaian – whose brother played for Ghana. Very cool. (This is why the constitution must pass; with dual citizenship we’ll have no more of this business about our runners decamping to the Emirates or elsewhere – they’ll be able to run elsewhere for money and run here for our glory.)

But I wanted Spain to win – they were the most ‘southern’ team left.

Finally, of course, comes the aftermath in South Africa.

Was the $5 billion reportedly invested in hosting the World Cup worth it?

Will the new infrastructure be used? Most commuters claim the new train’s too expensive, and whether the new stadiums will prove sustainable is up in the air.

Will the exposure of South Africa pan out into the future, not just in terms of tourism revenue but other investments?

Did hosting the World Cup make a difference beyond generating a reported feel-good factor between black and white and other South Africans?

Especially as that feel-good factor clearly did not extend to other Africans; Zimbabweans and other migrants are on high alert following threats of renewed attacks on ‘foreigners’ (a euphemism for other Africans).

Time will tell. But the lessons for us are there. Sobering lessons: those who do the work don’t necessarily make the money, and more moral ones: referees’ decisions can be respected and properly challenged when wrong (the English goal that never was).

Even in intense competition, players can follow the rules – and suffer the penalties when they don’t.

Enough said.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article was originally published by The East African.
* L. Muthoni Wanyeki is executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.