Money and Stadiums Galore

Football: the beautiful game, the people’s game, the language spoken by the world over.

Football, as FIFA would have you believe, has the power to unite, to challenge and to change. And so the World Cup is coming to Africa for the first time and, at last, African football will have its day. All under the glorious guidance of Sepp Blatter and his visionaries at FIFA…..

I’m sitting in traffic around Green Point, Cape Town, site of the new multi-billion rand project and one of five brand new stadia being built for 2010. Five more stadia across the country are undergoing major upgrades and the total cost will be somewhere around 9bn rand to be split between government, city and regional councils, the private sector and therefore, the good old taxpayer. Or those that actually pay their tax.

Sitting in the blazing sunshine, going nowhere fast as road workers beaver away about me trying to complete the complex new road system deemed necessary to bring the 65,000 supporters to this secluded enclave of Cape Town, it seems entirely unnecessary and a complete waste of valuable time and money.

Cape Town already has the 45,000 capacity Newlands stadium (built for the 1995 Rugby World Cup) and the city recently completed a 322m rand facelift of the purpose built football stadium at Athlone, specifically for 2010. Given that this is an African World Cup and FIFA wants to embrace the grass roots feel of African ‘soccer’, both stadiums are more than ample to host a quarter or semi-final. But both have been given status as mere ‘training grounds’ and expensive training grounds at that. So why then the need to splash out 4.3bn rand on a stadium that will become obsolete once the tournament has ended?

The issue goes back to 2005, when FIFA delegates arrived in the Cape to check out potential grounds to play host to group, second stage and final stage games. FIFA had earmarked Cape Town as a prime location with it’s obvious marketing and advertising potential. They spelled out the benefits of hosting high profile games in no uncertain terms to the city council before, as top SA newspaper The Mail & Guardian reports, rejecting the Athlone site on the grounds of the unsightly low income housing that forms its backdrop.

"A billion television viewers don’t want to see shacks and poverty on this scale" one delegate is alleged to have said.

For the 65,000 plus fans flying to the Cape, this is exactly the site that will greet them, as Cape Town International sits between two of the largest informal settlements in South Africa. Yet FIFA earmarked Green Point as their ‘preferred site’. They wanted the wealthy high-rise flats, the waterfront location and Table Mountain in the background, not that Newlands stadium doesn’t boast stunning views, and not a shack in site to offend the eye. And Cape Town wanted the high-profile matches.

So 4.3bn rand that could have been spent alleviating poverty, one of many mission statements banded about by FIFA prior to kick off next June, has been spent on a soon to be redundant stadium. All in the name of marketing. Good one. I wander if Blatter and his cronies have spent a winter in Cape Town, you’ll never even see the mountain. It’ll be lost amidst rainstorms and howling north westerly squalls.

So next June, when you tune your TV into one of the many channels that will be blurting out the ‘beautiful game’ amidst ads and sound bites, spare a thought for the millions in the shacks you won’t see. Spare a thought for the local businesses that will fall foul of the sales and advertising exclusion zones around all World Cup venues retained exclusively for FIFA-endorsed companies, many of whom have no business here in Africa. Yet.

Spare a thought for the street kids that are being rounded up and dumped at the city limits by the metro police. NGO’s such as the highly respected Umthombo Organisation in Durban have reported on metro police dumping street children at city limits prior to FIFA inspections and there are reports of tented compounds in the countryside being set up during the World Cup to keep the street children hidden from the cameras. So spare a thought for these individuals, and then have a think as to exactly what FIFA are up to and where their true motivations lie.

Football is no longer the beautiful game but about the marketing potential and moneymaking spin offs. The football and the footballers and really just pawns in the middle of an otherwise multi-billion pound industry with as little soul as the people that drive it.

It begs the question why FIFA chose Africa in the first place. Any semblance of the grass roots tournament they initially romanticised about is well and truly gone and all we seem to be left with is an airbrushed makeover of a continent in need, for the advertisers to drape their banners over. And when it’s over, all that will be left are shells of multi-billion rand stadiums with nothing to fill them.

Don’t get me wrong. If you are a football fan you have every reason to be excited. South Africa is a wonderful country full of passion and energy, and in South Africa the World Cup has found a good home. I have every hope that it will be a spectacular success, in spite of FIFA. And I have every hope that the plaudits after will go to South Africa and its people. I just take issue with the blatant profiteering of an association that should know better.

But then look at football today and the machine they’ve created.

But then nothing’s certain down here. And maybe Africa will win the day after all. And Blatter will whimper on home to his holiday mansion with his tail firmly between his legs.