Billions have been spent, corporate demands have been met, fans are ready to travel – but will the World Cup benefit South Africa's poor at all, asks BILL CORCORANin Cape Town
THE STREET traders from the Grand Parade market in Cape Town were among the millions of South Africans who bought into the idea that hosting the 2010 Fifa World Cup in their country would benefit all its citizens.
But with less than a month to go to the biggest sports event the African continent has ever witnessed, long-time trader Vincent Baatjies fears that he and his 400 colleagues, who usually occupy that open space, could miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
According to Baatjies, who has made a living for the past 18 years at the city-centre market, all the traders have had their licences for the Grand Parade revoked so that an official Fifa fan park for 25,000 people can be established on the inner-city site for the duration of the competition.
“We have built up a business here and people know where to come to find us,” he says. “Initially we were told we could not trade at all during the tournament, but now we have been moved to a different site because Grand Parade will be used to entertain foreign visitors.”
Under regulations imposed on the host country by football’s world governing body, Fifa, no one other than Fifa’s official corporate partners and sponsors are allowed to sell or promote products in the immediate vicinity of World Cup sites. The rationale is that Fifa must protect its interests, as it has paid large sums of money to link up with the official corporate element of the World Cup.
The fact that hawkers and traders across the country looked set to be sidelined during the tournament prompted StreetNet International, a Durban-based federation of street trader organisations, to initiate the World Class Cities for All Campaign (WCCA) campaign in 2007 to fight for their rights. It was only after months of protests and court actions that city officials in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Mbombela offered a select few traders limited access to World Cup sites. But protests are still ongoing in these cities, as traders say the new sites are not within reach of World Cup visitors. The seven remaining host cities have yet to give their urban poor any opportunity to cash in.
Only time will tell if South Africa’s informal traders get to benefit from Fifa’s showcase tournament, but the whole episode has brought to the fore genuine issues that few in officialdom seem willing to address, publicly at least. Since South Africa won the right to host the mega-event in 2004, the country’s citizens have been told that the €4 billion-plus expenditure to date has been worth it, because of the economic and social benefits to the country.
In addition, South Africans are being promised that the World Cup will leave a lasting legacy of a different kind. It is likely, they are told, to facilitate improved local race relations by helping to unite a divided country behind one team, and to aid in the deconstruction of the Afro-pessimistic attitude that often prevails in the western world. The tournament has also been credited as the driving force behind recent transport infrastructure developments, including the construction of a new airport in Durban and a rapid train line linking Johannesburg International Airport to the city as well as to nearby Pretoria.
But can a single sports event, albeit the largest in the world, truly achieve all that for a predominantly Third World country? Or is it just an opportunity for Fifa and its corporate partners to further their own agendas? The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) last year published a book, Development and Dreams: The Urban Legacy of the 2010 Football World Cup, which attempts to shed light on how the tournament will affect the host country and cities.
It states that while the tournament will be extraordinarily profitable for Fifa, which will make 25 per cent more out of this tournament than it did from Germany in 2006, the same cannot be said for the host nation itself.
“The economic projections are invariably erroneous, over-estimating the benefits and under-estimating the costs, and there is considerable debate regarding whether World Cups benefit or harm the host nation,” the book’s authors write in their introduction.
They suggest that much of the infrastructural development that has taken place in the run-up to the tournament is unlikely to benefit South Africa’s poor, as it is geared towards tourists and the middle class. They claim that most of the public transport investment was already planned anyway, and that the World Cup has merely accelerated its delivery.
The authors especially query whether the provision of 10 World Cup stadiums, four of them built from scratch, will be of any benefit at all to the country once the tournament is over.
“The question is whether the consequences promote regional inequality, disparities within host cities and a diversion of resources from the needs of the poor,” writes author Richard Tomlinson.
The HSRC’s questioning attitude was recently echoed by South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies, which last month alleged that Fifa president Sepp Blatter bullied Cape Town officials into building a new stadium at Green Point because it would look better on television, when two far less expensive options were available.
Despite these negative economic projections, the HSRC researchers insist that tangible economic issues are less important than the intangible legacy opportunities that staging a successful World Cup could bring.
Author Orli Bass says that showing African culture to the world in a positive manner would do a lot to dispel negative perceptions of Africa, and that harnessing the feel-good factor that comes with staging a successful event should help social cohesion at home.
“Perceptions of Africa are usually tied up with conflict, violence, corruption and hunger,” she says. “The World Cup offers us an opportunity on a global scale to change this mentality. And hopefully it will bring us together as a people as well.”
Footing the bill? Hosts and hangovers
According to the authors of
Development and Dreams: The Urban Legacy of the 2010 Football World Cup, not enough research is done after a mega-sports event because organisers disband and governments immediately focus on other activities. But the research that's available shows that the economic impact of World Cups and Olympic Games on the host nations is limited at best.
American host cities for the 1994 World Cup collectively lost between $5.5bn and $9.3bn, far from the $4bn gains that were expected. The original projections of increased visitor spending failed to take into account the displacement of normal spending, as regular travellers to the host cities were crowded out.
In the case of the Barcelona Olympics, widely considered a success, one of the downsides for locals was a marked increase in the cost of services, transport and food after the event. This is something researchers say should serve as a warning to the developing world.
In addition, public spending on the infrastructure needed to support a mega sports event often means budget cuts have to be made in other areas afterwards. These cuts usually affect those least likely to enjoy the event: the urban poor. Job creation associated with mega sports events down through the years was also found to be temporary.
