Bread and Circus

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A football match is not going to solve their problems… or change their lives…

Yesterday was the England/USA game at the World Cup in South Africa, so naturally we were all tuned in.

We hung the England flag in the window, as though we were living in a Council Estate in Croyden as opposed to over Rockefeller Center, and being on the 33rd floor, I am not sure anyone could see it, but it made us feel better. We decorated the table with UK/USA flags

We served our guests Newcastle Brown Ale, twiglets and Walker’s Sensations, as well as the traditional American hot dogs and mustard.  We even offered Heinz Baked Beans.

The games are fine and fun, but the press frenzy surrounding them is a bit odd.

The coverage, from ABC News to The BBC to The FT makes it seem as though deciding to hold the World Cup in South Africa is going to solve just about every problem the country has. In point of fact, it is going to solve nothing.

And South Africa has lots of problems, most of them economic.

About six months ago we went to Cape Town to run a VJ training seminar (and thereafter headed up the coast to Durban and Port Elizabeth).

I have been to Africa many times, but I had never been to South Africa before, and Cape Town is a stunningly beautiful city.  We stayed in the Cape Grace Hotel, on the harbor (or harbour) and it is, like any 5 star hotel, both refined and luxurious. We walked Cape Town (or at least the harbor part) and it too is beautiful and wealthy.  Then, like any dumb tourists, we decided it would be fun to visit the ‘wine’ country, so the hotel assembled for us a BMW7 with uniformed driver and tinted windows and we headed north on the very good highways that South Africa has.

A bit out of the city, we passed what is the biggest slum I have ever seen in my life (and I have seen a lot), most of it screened off from view.  But enough so you could see there was something really big out there.

The driver told me that this was Khayelitsha – the largest township in South Africa.  He told me some 3 million people lived there, (though the official numbers are lower).

If you have seen the movie District 9, it is based on Khayelitsha, so I am told.

I asked our driver to get off the highway and drive into the township. He was very reluctant (very)! But we were the people paying the bills and he ultimately complied.

There is but one road that winds through Khayelitsha – a bit like going into Ikea.  Once you get in you have to go all the way through to get out.  So we did.  This, I am told, was to make ‘security’ easier in the days of Apartheid. Maybe even still today.

Now, I have seen the worst favelas outside of Rio, I have been to the poorest villages in Sudan or Niger; I have lived in Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza. I have never seen anything like the concentrated and intense poverty of Khayelitsha.

So now when I watch the coverage of the World Cup and I see package after package on TV news explaining to me how the World Cup is going to change these people’s lives, I am at a loss to understand how.

According to the official FIFA website, the World Cup will cost South Africa $3.7 billion. That’s to build the stadium, put in the roads, upgrades to the venues, video infrastructure and so on.  I have no doubt that a good percentage of that $3.7 billion will go to a few construction companies and their lives will be infinitely improved by the World Cup in South Africa.

As for the people of Khayelitsha, or a dozen other townships or a hundred other villages across South Africa, I cannot understand how the expenditure of $3.7 billion to build a stadium benefits them one iota. Yet to see them dancing in the streets because the World Cup is now in South Africa is saddening beyond words.

The Romans had a term for it.

They called it Bread and Circus.

They kept the peasantry entertained.

And that’s all this is now. Entertainment for the peasants. A public relations show by the government of South Africa. How much better it would be if they were to spend that $3.7 billion on decent schools.

Then, it might make a difference.

But not this.

Pass the Marmite?