Is there a ‘triple bottom line’ benefit to SA’s World Cup?

Nicholas Shepherd

It’s been an unbelievably heady couple of weeks in South Africa, and all the World Cup hoopla must have touched the life of every South African in some way or another. But what’s the bottom line here? Has it all been worth it?

Economy?

While the number of international visitors was far lower than the pundits initially predicted, and stories circulate of failed World Cup business ventures, the question of whether it has all been ‘worth it’ from a financial point of view will probably only be answered definitively in several years time, as we reap the benefits of a massive boost in international tourism and millions of dollars worth of international TV exposure.

At this stage economists don’t even agree on what hosting the cup has
actually cost us! Udesh Pillay of the Human Sciences Research Council has estimated a cost to the South African tax payer of 6,6% of our GDP – somewhere in the order of R84 billion – while other economists have calculated the bill for hosting Fifa 2010 to be only R45 billion. Against that you have to set the inflow of foreign currency, plus local spending, and of course add in the worldwide media exposure of the country, which according to Tony Twine of Econometrix would have cost us some $45 billion to buy. So the jury on this one is no doubt going to be out for quite a while.

Infrastructure?

From an infrastructure point of view, the sense of urgency and focus provided by the need to get ready for the world’s biggest sporting event has seen all sorts of projects initiated and completed that might otherwise have still been on the drawing board.

Quite apart from the stadia of course – and again, the ‘white elephant’ question will only be conclusively answered over the course of the next few years – there are the hugely impressive upgrades to several of our airports, railway stations, as well as the introduction of the integrated rapid transport systems in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

As Capetonians, of course, we have been specially spoiled in this respect, and every time I head up Anzio Road in Observatory and accelerate smoothly through the new hairpin freeway link-up on Hospital Bend, I still have a thrill of vicarious civic pride that remains indelibly associated with the World Cup – we did it!

So score a draw for finance, a win for infrastructure and let’s focus on the third of my World Cup ‘was it worth it?’ questions: nation-building.

Nation-building?

We’ve certainly won the first half, hands down. The flags, the mirror socks, the Bafana jerseys, the face-painting, the vuvuzelas echoing through sedate middle-class streets have all been a wonderfully raucous and colourful celebration of South African-ness, sorely needed as our fragile sense of post-liberation national unity has worn so worryingly thin in recent times.

But how deep does it go and how long will it last? If the bonhomie and sense of fellowship fades with the echo of the last vuvuzela, what will we have gained? Unless we can translate all the good feeling into sustainable improvements in our standard of living, into lasting commitments to uplift the underdeveloped, it will all come to nothing more than papering over of the cracks and schisms that divide our society.

Africa’s World Cup

Of course, it’s not just at a national level that this sense of belonging should work. The 2010 World Cup was pitched from the very beginning by Mbeki as belonging to the whole of the African continent. Certainly it has been heartening to see how – despite all the ‘dual citizenship’ of white motorists displayed in the window-mounted flags – almost every South African I know was hugely supportive of the last remaining African team, Ghana’s Black Stars, and gutted by their unfair defeat at the hands of Uruguay.

Ubuntu vs Xenophobia

But if that support and pride in being Africans is replaced in the newspaper headlines with reports of another round of ethnic cleansing of refugees and asylum-seekers – and many disturbing rumours have been circulating for months of what will happen to foreigners ‘after the World Cup’ – it will once again come to precious little. And our sense of pride will be replaced with shame.

Fortunately, this time it seems, authorities do seem to have heeded the warnings, and police and army patrols of trouble spots are keeping the situation under control.

Ultimately however, the solution must lie not with control but by eradicating the deprivation and poverty that underlies the tension. Whenever there is a desperate competition for the basic necessities of life, communities will split and mobilise along ethnic lines.

All in the same team

So our challenge as South Africans is still to overcome the crying lack of jobs, education and opportunity. Celebrating the reality that not only are we all on the same field, but all members the same team, competing for a safer, more equitable and more prosperous South Africa, could go a long way to helping us achieve this.

It’s up to all of us to keep the gees going and win a far more important game than the one played with a ball – Jabulani or otherwise!