Well, firstly, this tournament has been hyped by the government and the media for the past 6 years. Everything in SA in that period has somehow been about the culmination of hosting the WC so it’s pretty much been “please don’t do anything other than support and believe in the government so we can produce the tournament”.
Let me make something clear: the event itself is a criminal racket run by FIFA. There will be no net-benefit to the country or the people because of this spectacle. A World Cup “Host” nation really lives up to its name: it’s a host for the parasitic invasion of FIFA crony-corporatism.
The reason they picked S.A. was probably because they knew the apparatchiks in our regime are already well-versed in malfeasance and corruption and could be relied upon to tow the FIFA line which is: raw commercialism for FIFA and fuck everyone else. It is said the tournament has cost the government about 5% of GDP. Keep in mind that’s an equivalent percentage to what the entire United States spends on education each year. What do the taxpaying folk get after all is said and done? Some refurbished roads and utilities, some new public transport and a bunch of pretty useless new stadiums.
To quote the inimitable Etienne de la Boetie:
""Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. […] Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, ‘Long live the King!’ The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them."
Thus the age of bread and circuses has come to pass in South Africa. Tens of thousands of people “celebrated” in the cities and the townships over the past couple days. The state-owned and private press characterized many of these events as “spontaneous” in an egregious feat of doublethink (they had been instrumental in drumming up support and organizing many of the events the week before).
At the opening match the President of FIFA and his co-tyrant the President of South Africa lavished in the spectacle of the brand new 90-000 seater stadium in Johannesburg, complete with overflying military jets. They, of course, had to invoke the political ghost of Nelson Mandela, a convenient and efficient ruse of instantly drumming up support for anything the government wants to happen.
The tournament and the spectacle make it so much easier for everyone to forget the hard facts about South Africa: the stagnant economy with close to 50% unemployment, one of the highest rates of crime in the world, failing infrastructure and utilities, and millions still languishing in poverty; all of which can be traced back to government interventionism from the past and the present. These hard facts will remain once a month has passed and the tournament is over. And then what?
The fools did shamelessly cry “Long live the King!”, perhaps not as bluntly, but “Viva South Africa!” and all the pomp of empty nationalism can be interpreted as the same thing. And if you try and put a damper on anything happening here right now you’re nothing more than a negative person, a cynic who should “lighten up”.
/end rant.
