Today sees the launch of the 2010 football world cup in South Africa. It’s great news for football fans, and we’re playing our part with a world cup raffle (comment if you’d like to get a ticket!) and South Africa night for the final (watch this space for details.)

But great as it might be for us on the other side of the world to get a month of football to watch, the real costs of the tournament for South Africa are getting hidden amongst the excitement.

Over the next month we’re going to be bringing you a series of articles about South Africa, its history and long political struggles for democracy and socialism that are far from over.

Twenty years ago, holding the world cup in South Africa would have been unthinkable. The world at large refused to allow South Africa to participate in most major sporting events because of Apartheid, the state enforced system of extreme racial segregation and oppression.

But with the fall of Apartheid in the early 90s, the world’s media told us South Africa’s problems were solved. There was democracy, and a government elected by the black majority was finally in power.

Since then however, South African governments have turned away from the left wing ideas that inspired many in the struggle against Apartheid, and looked to global capitalism to solve South Africa’s problems.

The result has been that the majority of South Africans continue to live below the poverty lines, with millions of homeless and low rates of access to clean water or electricity. The average male life expectancy is just 49, and there are unemployment rates of 40%.

While so much has been spent on the world cup, the government still does not provide thousands with a proper home

The government has made the world cup an important part of its economic strategy, and has spent $4.1 billion on hosting the event, more than any other country before it. A series of brand new stadia have been built, driving an economic bubble in the construction industry. However, now that the work is done, the real question is, how much will South Africa actually benefit from the world cup?

In order to win the right to host the tournament, South Africa had to give FIFA 17 key guarantees. High among these was that the stadia and the surrounding areas would become exclusive economic zones. Within these zones, FIFA and its partners, such as merchandise companies, service providers and foreign teams, will not pay tax and will not be subject to controls on taking money out of the country.

Huge amounts of stuff has been imported into these zones, but the South African state is not seeing any tax revenue, which will have a long term impact on the South African economy. Where money has been collected, it is then paid back in tax rebates.

The zones, which extend for wide areas around the stadia, have become exclusion zones for small businesses and street traders. Durban fisherfolk will not be able to sell their catch on the piers. And thousands of people who depend on street trading for their livelihood have been displaced, in order to allow FIFA and its multinational partners higher profits.

FIFA, the international governing body of football, is officially a “not for profit organisation,” and as such enjoys tax-exempt status at its headquarters in Switzerland. But it has already banked as much as £2.2 billion in profits from the world cup in South Africa, thanks to the government concessions. Fifa secretary-general ­Jerome Valcke boasted that “we have increased our income by 50% since 2006 in Germany to 2010 in South Africa”

FIFA's Jerome Valcke rubs his hands at world cup profits

Given how much the government has capitulated to the demands of FIFA, the spokesman they put up on the issue is appropriately named Adrian Lackay. He said:

“From the perspective of what we spent as a country and from what the country stands to make in terms of revenue and profits it is almost ­negligible.

“Our approach to the World Cup has been that it was never going to be a revenue-raising exercise. Certainly it would be wrong to view the World Cup as a significant contributor in itself.

“The concessions we had to give to Fifa are simply too demanding and overwhelming for us to have material monetary benefits.”

Another government official, speaking anonymously to South African newspaper, was more blunt: “Fifa are a bunch of thugs. Not even the UN expects you to sign away your tax base. These mafiosos do.

Other demands of FIFA have put a severe strain on South Africa. The South African Football Association has had to provide FIFA with two private jets,  two limousines, 300 cars, half a dozen buses and “chauffeurs who speak fluent English and are thoroughly familiar with the area”.

Hospital beds, intensive care units and ambulances have been reserved for FIFA and its foreign visitors. More than £61 million has been spent readying emergency medical services and numerous state-of-the-art medical centres, ambulances and rescue vehicles which have been kept under lock and key for exclusive use during the 30-day tournament.

The new stadia themselves may well prove to be expensive white elephants.  In Cape Town a brand new stadium was built, despite the fact that the existing one would have done just fine if an extra layer of seats was added. This was the most expensive of the venues, costing over £396 million. The reason for this, according to FIFA, is that, “A billion television viewers don’t want to see shacks and poverty on this scale [as exists near the old stadium].”

The hugely expensive new Green Point stadium in Cape Town

The £273 million new stadium in Durban is in fact a stone’s throw from the existing one, which again could easily have been extended to meet world cup standards. This is all the more perverse, considering that after the tournament 15,000 seats will be removed from the stadium because it’s too big! What this points to of course is that once the world cup is finished these stadia will not have any use.

New airports and train lines have been built specifically for the tournament, which will do nothing to address the huge public transport problems of people who live in poor townships like Soweto, but will allow temporary rich visitors to travel in style.

One of the more sinister demands made by FIFA was to do with the fear internationally of South Africa’s high crime rate. To deal with this, special 24 hour, 7 days a week courts have been set up. Over £3 million has been spent on 56 of these special courts, with the aim of processing any crime around the world cup very quickly. FIFA’s Valcke has spoken publicly about using South Africa’s police and courts as his own tool:

“We will protect our World Cup whatever we have to do – that’s very clear.
Even if we again are looking as bad guys… or me personally as a bad guy…
but that’s my role… is to protect the world cup… and to protect Fifa…
and that’s what I will do. And to do this I need the police, I need the
justice… Because the World Cup has to be a success.”

Its no surprise that this has led to a ratcheting up of police oppression against poor South Africans. Marches and rallies have been banned throughout South Africa in June. Last week protesting workers were killed by cops in Etwatwa (East Rand) and Protea South (Soweto).

But the most brutal legacy of the world cup will be the thousands of people evicted from where they were living to make way for it. Here there’s an interactive panorama of some of the areas affected, where thousands have been forced into transit camps where people will live in terrible conditions indefinitely. The BBC’s studio is on the roof of a hospital from which homeless sick people were removed, and the England team are using changing rooms for training that were previously home to homeless squatters, who have since been evicted.

Inside a transit camp for displaced homeless people

Football around the world is the people’s game, loved by the working class. The world cup is an exciting time for all football fans. But that shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the fact that it is now controlled by powerful, global economic forces, and the South African world cup will do more harm than good for the South African poor. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you info about people’s resistance in South Africa, both today and during Apartheid.

But in the meantime, it’s important to remember that a big sporting event has brought corruption and land grabs in its wake. The Athens Olympics helped contribute to the huge debts of the Greek state today, for example. It’s something that it’s important for us to keep in mind in the run up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.