Mission accomplished

For six years South Africa built up towards hosting the 2010 World Cup, and for the past four weeks much of the country has existed in football fever. On July 11 the final whistle will blow, the confetti will rain on the new world champion, and South Africa will return to normal.

Or perhaps it won’t. Perhaps the World Cup will present a turning point for South Africa, and indeed Africa.

The economists have been doubtful that the World Cup in itself would have a significant commercial impact on the country directly. A sporting event is not likely to inspire business to impulsively pump resources into the event’s host nation.

Yet, the benefits may materialise indirectly as South Africa has refuted many prejudices against the country and its continent. The successful hosting of the World Cup surely will help put South Africa on investment shortlists, with many false preconceptions about the country now neutralised. South Africa will now be regarded as a country with the competitive infrastructure and human capacity to satisfy the highest expectations.

Doubts that South Africa would have the ability to host the world’s biggest event — arguably bigger even than the Olympics — surfaced as early as the first bidding process, for the 2006 World Cup, which South Africa controversially and perhaps providentially lost to Germany. When South Africa won the right to host the 2010 World Cup, FIFA’s confidence in the country was not widely shared.

The sceptics predicted with undue certainty but no foundation that the country would not be able to build the required stadiums in time. They were very wrong: all construction work was completed ahead of their deadlines, even where initial difficulties caused delays.

In contrast, London’s Wembley Stadium missed its deadline by almost a year. England is bidding to host the 2018 World Cup. The chorus of doubters has yet to appear.

It may be argued that many people — internationally and even locally — wanted South Africa to fail, perhaps to confirm their own prejudices. First it was the stadium question, then it was crime. And while our crime problem is indeed serious, it turned out that the German team did not require the bullet-proof vests which they reportedly would wear while in South Africa. And when it was not crime, then international media — especially Britain’s gutter press — excitably warned that football fans could be caught up in a race war.

In short, to many European observers in particular, it seemed a preposterous notion that an African country could presume to compete with the rest of the world.

And with all predictions of a disaster evaporating, the only complaint about South Africa’s World Cup concerned the noise of the vuvuzela, a criticism tainted by the often racist commentary that accompanied it. But why should a football event in South Africa not be scored by the typical sounds of football in South Africa? Why should South Africans bend to the subjective preferences of others? In the event, visiting fans and supermarket customers in England embraced the sound of South African football.

The World Cup has brought South Africans together, however fleetingly. It is not too sentimental to appeal for that sense of unity of purpose to be nurtured and developed. South Africans must be exhorted to maintain the spirit of concord that allowed us to stage a mammoth event in a manner which many people thought inconceivable.

Our country has shown the political, economic and social will to put together as huge a event as a football World Cup. But we must be warned: the dividends of the superb accomplishment will be squandered if we, as a nation, fail to apply the same collective will to addressing the scandal of poverty.