“South Africans are beginning to wonder anxiously whether the huge expenditure necessary to host the Cup will have been worth it…” Are they? There are the usual murmurings about spending money on schools instead of stadiums, but this is dinner party conversation not economics. (Usually by earnest white people with the vaguest theoretical idea of what sport is.)

South Africa’s economy remains fundamentally unfair, and the World Cup will profit the usual class of people. (British newspaper reports contrasting Sandton with Soweto neatly gloss over first world complicity. You think this is bad? If we allowed the unwashed masses to attend games, if we spent the cash on improving the infrastructure around Orlando Stadium instead of on new pitches and high defintion TV, you’d be exponentially more appalled. Not that we would have been granted the tournament in the first place.) But as far as instances of capitalistic exploitation go, this is one of the more awesome.

I realise that blog posts are subject to relatively lax standards of fact checking, but the VVIP problem has been overhyped and there is nothing new or unforeseen about South African workers going on strike. The local organising committee and government are sophisticated (and ruthless) enough to deal with this stuff. Cash was apparently stolen from the Colombian team yesterday. That’s more embarrassing, but hey, this is South Africa, stuff gets stolen.

JL says that the tournament is making living conditions worse. This is not true. The poor remain as deprived and exploited as they always were. Affluent South Africans, black and white (though mainly white), need to start making genuine sacrifices. Fundamental economic reform is an urgent moral imperative. But oh my fucking God this is going to be an amazing World Cup.

The campaigning NGO War on Want has built a map that gives an excellent overview of the situation in Cape Town – http://www.waronwant.org/overseas-work/south-africa-and-the-2010-world-cup

“This is not a question where Fifa can intervene because it is economy, it is the responsibility of the national association members in Fifa to make sure their clubs are in good order.”

Well what about the responsibility to deliver a World Cup tournament that doesn’t leave the host nation in “good order”? As Professor Denver Hendricks, director-general of the national department of sport and recreation between 2000 and 2006 rightly asked; why didn’t FIFA and the South African government attempt to deliver:

“a much more moderate World Cup, an African event … Remember, the initial estimate for the stadiums was something like R1,8 billion; I think we are closer to R18 billion now … Did we invest that money wisely? If these buildings in the long run are going to cost you more money to maintain, shouldn’t we have built houses and factories and things like that, that could have had longer term benefits for our people and our country?”

I think the answer has to be yes.

Read ‘Player and Referee’: http://www.iss.co.za/pgcontent.php?UID=29940.