Africa's World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space

Preface and Acknowledgments

Preface and Acknowledgments FRom mAY 15, 2004, when the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), soccer’s world governing body, announced that South Africa would host the 2010 World Cup, South Africans oscillated between collective exhilaration and personal anxiety. In the six years between FIFA’s decision and the opening ceremony at Soccer City outside Soweto, South Africans debated the potential benefits of becoming the first African nation to stage what is arguably the most important global cultural event on the planet. In workplaces, schools, markets, streets, taverns, and in the media, ordinary people discussed what hosting the World Cup would mean for a country with extraordinary levels of poverty and inequality stemming from more than a century of colonial capitalism, racial segregation, and apartheid. As the historic event drew closer, popular debates intensified. Many pundits and knowledgeable fans worried that the national team, popularly known as Bafana Bafana (Zulu for The Boys), would exit quickly; other South Africans blinded by patriotic optimism or less familiar with the game, went so far as to predict that their team would win the tournament . When Siphiwe Tshabalala scored to give South Africa the lead against Mexico in the opening game, lingering doubts and fears magically dissipated as millions of South Africans united behind the team. At that moment, the country experienced what no other event, with the exception of the first democratic elections in 1994, had ever achieved: a unified nation, collectively imagining the impossible. South African sport fans had first tasted this possibility in 1995 when the Springboks won the rugby World Cup on home soil, but it took “the beautiful game”—the national pastime—and a heady infusion of sporting nationalism to make it invitingly real, at least for a few viii • Preface and Acknowledgments days. This national euphoria partly explains why South Africans readily forgave their team for failing to advance to the second round, the only host nation in World Cup history to have ever suffered such a fate. What mattered more to South Africans was how the World Cup recast perceptions of their country, altered public spaces in host cities, and how it inspired people across race, class, gender, and age lines to wear yellow Bafana shirts and blow vuvuzelas in fan parks and public viewing areas. After Bafana Bafana’s elimination, South Africans supported other teams, with Ghana’s Black Stars a popular pan-African choice. Meanwhile, South Africans and foreign visitors alike marveled at the efficient organization and infectious energy. Matches were held in state-of-the-art stadiums without any glitches. To the great satisfaction of the organizers, global media congratulated South Africa for staging a world-class event. The stuff of dreams. A few days after the lights went down on the 2010 FIFA World Cup, however, South Africa’s public sector unions embarked on a massive strike. More than one million disgruntled teachers, nurses, civil servants , and other government workers brought the country to a halt, demanding increases in wages and housing allowances. Two years later, police shot and killed thirty-four platinum miners during a wildcat strike at a Lonmin mine in Marikana. These actions brought home the painful realities that make postapartheid South Africa one of the most unequal countries in the world. As 2012 comes to a close, it is clear that the South African government’s and FIFA’s promises of tangible economic legacies from the tournament remain largely unfulfilled. South African football’s woes in the international arena continue unabated. At the time of writing (November 2012), Bafana Bafana is ranked eighty-fourth in the world, one rung lower than during the World Cup. To make matters worse, the team tragicomically failed to qualify for the 2012 African Nations Cup. As the final whistle blew after a scoreless draw against Sierra Leone, the South African players danced eagerly on the pitch of the Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit and smiled for the television cameras, thinking that they had qualified. With South Africa, Niger, and Sierra Leone tied at the top of the group, the tiebreaker was not goal difference, as the South Africans mistakenly believed, but points earned in head-to-head contests. On that basis, Niger qualified instead. A few months later Gordon Igesund replaced an embarrassed Pitso Mosimane as Bafana Bafana head coach. Luckily for Preface and Acknowledgments • ix the new manager, South Africa automatically qualified for the 2013 African Nations Cup...