Soccer/Football fans are avidly watching the World Cup as it takes place in South Africa right now. The glamor and hoopla associated with it is supposed to excite everyone across the globe, including of course South Africans. What’s missing from the story is the tragedy, not the glory, that FIFA’s sports tournament really represents.In an obscenely unequal country that is South Africa, one that is ravaged by ongoing socio-economic apartheid and of course HIV/AIDS, it is mindboggling how the South African government in cahoots with FIFA and the international business world is spending so much on stadiums and sickeningly corporatized sports paraphernalia and infrastructure. None of the pleasures of this sports spectacle is available to the majority of the black poor of South Africa. And this all comes at the expense of meaningful social investment in health, education, and jobs.
But of course FIFA’s World Cup is one of the sacred cows of capitalist modernity and its stranglehold over the sports world. Therefore, we are not supposed to ask questions and but must be passive spectators to this corporate bonanza in profit-making and greed. And the vast majority of South Africans who could only dream of actually attending one of the matches at the massive white elephant stadiums should know there place in the “new” South Africa.
Fortunately, as always, there is resistance and a refusal by many South Africans to accept such a dastardly state of affairs: check out this site.
