Next year will be an eventful year for us. The world is coming here. For a month, SA will literally be a world stage. And we now seem to be approaching the event with more hope and belief than apprehension.
Remember the promoters of Plan B? How Australia was going to ride to the rescue because corruption, crime, Aids, incompetence and so on made SA an unsuitable host ? That's now water under the bridge. In the end, action will speak louder than words.
In retrospect, though, it's a good thing that, thanks to a certain Mr Dempsey, SA was robbed of the opportunity to host the soccer World Cup in 2006. It would have been too soon, I think. Also, hosting the event next year means that the infrastructure development has fortuitously helped to cushion us from the effects of the economic downturn.
Danny Jordaan deserves an Oscar, or whatever it is they give to people who pull rabbits out of hats. It's a monumental achievement. South Africans have yet to cotton on to the import of what is about to hit them and their country. It could change the national psyche and international perception of SA.
SA has hosted both the cricket and rugby World Cups in the past, but none has been as divisive as the soccer World Cup. Why? Feelings extend from outright hostility, to indifference, to a passionate embrace of the event, especially among poor communities.
Like everything else in SA, these views are reflective of, or are inextricably embedded in, our past. The round ball never had the same status as cricket and rugby among the previously privileged. It was rare for white schools to play soccer. For soccer, no more than a piece of land and a few sticks are adequate as facilities, so the sport took off in black communities where sports facilities were generally non existent. Soccer was thus perceived as a black sport. Most black people became more passionate about soccer than they were about politics, even in apartheid times. Soccer loyalties divided friends, families and even led to divorce.
To diehard supporters, SA hosting the World Cup is akin to a second liberation - the final vindication of the popularity, if not the supremacy, of a sport that for decades has given them immense pleasure even when everything else around them was dark and forbidding. Soccer is the one thing that worked for them, that always delivered.
However, I think we should now call a halt to hosting international events. Since 1994 we've scoured the international scene for events to host. The whole exercise has been emotionally draining - from the failure of the Olympic bid, the highs of the 1995 rugby victory, the African Nations Cup, and the initial disappointment and then elation of the soccer triumph, capped by the haggling over whether we're fit to host it. We're suffering hosting fatigue. We need to go back to living our normal lives. We've had enough of trying to please foreigners.
As for the football, let's not stress ourselves too much about our national side's chances. They don't have any. We should enjoy the spectacle. Brazil is everybody's favourite to lift the cup. Those who keep tabs on such matters are putting their money on Spain.
I'm a realist. I'm rooting for England. The Poms taking the cup back to an admiring Queen will be the best thing to happen to SA. They, and their media, won't stop talking about it - and us. "When we won the World Cup in SA..." We'd be guaranteed free, and positive, publicity for eternity. They are still talking about 1966, the last time England won the cup. Come to think of it, the ball didn't even cross the line!
Ranking the Analysts 2009
