FIFA Too Much for South Africa!

[AriseSouthAfrica]

From a Korean web-site:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=434019&no=382306&rel_no=1

FIFA Too Much for South Africa

And then there is the FIFA World Cup. A much larger event in many respects, and it is still two years away. In South Africa, if it is not already abundantly obvious, things are going from bad to worse.

The initial concerns when the World Cup was awarded to South Africa were sneered at. They were seen as "spiteful" or "spoilsport," rather than rational, real and realistic concerns. One of the main concerns has been crime.

South Africa's crime statistics rival Columbia's as among the worst in the world, but when it comes to sheer violence, South Africa steps ahead as the undisputed leader. South Africa's elite crime fighting unit -- the Scorpions -- has been ordered to fall away and be integrated, piecemeal, into the ineffectual and corrupt South African Police Service. This is ostensibly because they were doing too good a job, and more pertinently, were exposing corruption at the highest levels.

A Cancer Called Corruption

Corruption is undoubtedly South Africa's greatest affliction. And it is the greed associated with this "something for nothing" attitude that risks the shipwrecking of the FIFA World Cup as well as of what is presently Africa's greatest success story. It is becoming more and more plausible that South Africa, in the wrong hands, may go down the drain just as Zimbabwe did. Land redistribution is already in the cards, although on a scale that appears for now to be "fair" and acceptable.

Another dilemma facing South Africa is the struggle to provide adequate electricity. The current setup involves rolling blackouts, every day, nationwide, and this has been scheduled for at least another six months. Labor Union COSATU wants to strike against tariff increases, and ESKOM (the power utility) wants to pass on massive increases in coal energy prices to its consumers. South African's have already taken strain with record-breaking increases in petroleum prices. As such, Eskom's tariff hikes could not have come at a worse time.

Meanwhile, attempts to use less electricity have failed dismally. Statistics South Africa reports a 2.3 percent increase in consumption in February 2008 (year on year), and before that it was a 5.3 percent increase.

Part of the problem is South Africa's aggressive home building policy. Each new home presents a new user on the countries' national grid. Thus even a certain amount of efficiency gets swallowed up by the additional demands made via newly electrified homes. A country growing at 4 to 5 percent needs its electricity supply to grow at a similar rate. Instead, South Africa is producing almost half this figure, at around 2.7 percent. Unseasonably wet weather and expensive coal prices wreak havoc with Eskom's ability to deliver on spec right now.

And with all these huge problems facing South Africa, the country faces a crisis on top of this as well. The skills shortage in South Africa is chronic. It is so severe that experts believe the stadiums, while they will be completed on time, will be way over budget, and will require the importation of skilled artisans (for example the Chinese workers employed for the construction of Olympic Stadiums). The same applies to South Africa's Gautrain network (currently under construction). Meanwhile, public transport in South Africa remains Third World.

The future of the 2010 World Cup is far from certain, and far less certain than the Olympics. It is not difficult to imagine the next 18 months in South Africa dominated by strikes and struggle, with crime rebounding (there has been talk of increased attacks during power cuts) and municipal services eroding even further. South Africa's education, health and police services are all a shambles. The roads are crumbling and filled with potholes. Even the country's water supply is now under investigation.

To the extent that China manages (or suppresses) its own PR nightmare, and pulls off a successful event, perhaps South Africa can learn to come to grips with its own domestic challenges. As the 2010 World Cup gets closer, South Africa will have to manage its PR too.

We can only hope both South Africa and their Bafana Bafana soccer team are able to demonstrate their potential. If both cannot show they can put their best feet forward, 2010 is bound to flop. My prediction is that we can't expect to hope things will turn out peachy in South Africa, but they might turn out all right. But given the evidence we already have (that power supply is on course to get worse going into the future, and crime too) South Africa is not going in the direction we need it to be going.

©2008 OhmyNews