The African Times, January 2010
Africans are lazy, criminally inclined and incompetent. That is basically what many “experts” in the world of professional football mean when expressing fears that South Africa will make a mess of the 2010 World Cup. Half-finished stadiums, poor public transport leading to traffic chaos, sparsely filled stands because white Africans prefer cricket and rugby and black residents can’t afford tickets.
How unaware.
And then the security! They think foreign fans should walk the streets of Pretoria and Johannesburg with their handbags and wallets secured – or just stay in their hotels.
How ignorant.
And – they carp – doesn’t an emerging economy like South Africa need housing, schools and hospitals more than football stadiums?
How arrogant.
Anyone who witnessed the World Cup draw in Cape Town’s Long Street on Dec. 4 can only look forward to the start of the competition. Delighted, celebrating people from South Africa and around the world held a football fest that only served to whet the appetite for more this June and July.
What joy.
Too bad German TV had no interest in reporting on the big party. When midnight fell over Cape Town and the party came to a peaceful end, the late news here broadcast a report of violence in the townships.
South Africans, just let these naysayers keep traveling your land and chasing their prejudices. They choose to ignore South Africa’s progressive constitution, democratic rule of law and fully Western market economy; that anyone can say openly what they think; that journalists can write what they want without being shot as in Russia; that tourists need not fear abduction as in Colombia; that the stadiums – unlike at the last global mega-event held in Europe, the Athens Olympics – have been completed on time. Just blow into your vuvuzelas and move your bodies (not necessarily to a toyi-toyi beat) so that they see, hear and learn – and their unawareness, ignorance and arrogance will be swept aside.
And when they finally awake, embrace them with your courteous, restrained charm. Then – of this there can be no doubt – the World Cup will truly become a football festival, dissolving all doubts even in your own land, just as the misgivings of many Germans ahead of the 2006 World Cup disappeared during that unforgettable summer. In the end they will all proclaim: Ayoba South Africa!