Patriotism, nationalism and the rest...

The country, at the moment, is going through a surge of patriotism. There are flags everywhere. Sometimes they are the right way up and sometimes not. Sometimes cars have socks over their rear-view mirrors. Sometimes they have flags on the aerial. Sometimes they have flags on the boot, the bonnet, the windows. And sometimes, on all of these.

What I find astonishing is that white people who, a year or two ago were sneering, and saying we would never be ready, and the crime rate, and bemoaning how boring soccer is in comparison to rugby, these are now festooning their cars with flags. And, don’t get me wrong, I don’t see anything essentially wrong with that.

Is it that there has been a sea-change in the way in which people are looking at their country? Are they displaying pride in the achievement of getting ready for the event? I hear discussions about the 2010 FIFA World Cup in the changerooms at the gym. Whereas before, white men would be dismissive and churlish about it, suddenly they are speaking authoritatively about it. They have opinions on who is going to win. They have all been to see something in the stadium – and they are impressed. They like this player, that team and this coach. It is a remarkable and noteworthy change.

Clearly, the sport of football will never be the same again in this country. Young children are bewitched by it – mine are, and I am not a soccer fan. The blue eyed boy of apartheid – rugby – is now joined by a fairly well resourced competitor. At the moment, there is only one game in town and its balls are round.

And it is true that when you watch television broadcasts of South Africans singing the national anthem, a lot of whites still do not know anything other than the English and Afrikaans parts of it, while a lot of blacks either do not know (or refuse to sing) the English and Afrikaans, or they refuse to sing it.
But generally, despite things like this, there is a general outpouring of patriotism.

Now, simultaneously with this experience, I have been having some – well, “discussions” would be too grand a term for these things – but let us say “interchanges” with a range of my friends on Facebook, about Israel and the recent international outrage which the Israeli government has committed with the “Freedom Flotilla”, leaving 9 people dead. Some of my harder core Jewish friends – maybe even Zionist friends – are infuriated that I should even think such a thing. Because to them it seems, Israel is not capable of doing wrong. It is only “them” - Muslims, Arabs and non-Jews who do terrible things to Israel.

It has frequently become extremely nasty indeed, these Facebook inter-changes. It happens whenever I, or anyone else associated with me, takes a negative view of Israel. And it has given me pause for some serious thought on the issue of patriotism.
Because, if I am honest, I have to say that I am deeply suspicious of patriotism, in any form and in any guise. When I see flags fluttering in the wind in numbers, I see Nazi Germany. I see the kind of fervour which that maniac Hitler was able to whip up and the way in which that entire nation, young and old, were enthralled. And I hate it with every fibre of my being. It is that kind of stuff which enables evil to be baptised good. And I cannot but see the same thing happening in Israel today. It is a strange and curious irony indeed.

I think, in the case of Israel, that the land has been deified. To the extent that it needs to be served unconditionally. To the extent that it has power to demand absolute loyalty and allegiance. To the extent that some people are prepared to defend it against any and all odds. To the near hysterical responses to even the mildest criticism. This is the behaviour of a worshipper – a devotee - not a citizen.

And it is this worship of the land that I fear so much. Here, the xenophobic attacks that have happened are usually based on gross ignorance; on lack of analysis and education; and on huge doses of selfishness and ingratitude. But what it finally based on? It is based on this thing called being “South African”. And that “being South African” can somehow be used to justify terror, murder, robbery, and that thing which the bible (in the story of Sodom) identifies as virtually unforgivable, inhospitality.

It is the same with Israel. It was the same in Nazi Germany. It was the same in apartheid South Africa. It is horrific.

A crumb or two from FIFA's table

I thought it might be worth posting these pics of the Cape Town Stadium, done in wire beadwork. We have commissioned all of the 2010 stadia to be done in this way so that wire/beadworkers can get a tiny look-in on the World Cup. I think they are pretty good. The artist is Abraham Tapera, who is one of a group called Bead Nation.

Old Pictures of Greenmarket Square - Cape Town

Greenmarket Square Slave Market, Cape Town

Rights to this picture are owned by The Western Cape Provincial Archive

Greenmarket Square, Cape Town

Rights to this picture are owned by the Western Cape Provincial Archive


Greenmarket Square

Rights to this picture are owned by the Western Cape Provincial Government

I work on Greenmarket Square. It is a really vibey cobbled square in the centre of the CBD, with good restaurants all around it and interesting looking buildings looking over it. The Square has a very long history, dating back to the slave trade, when slaves were bought and sold at the market, but for the most part, the square was the centre of trade in goods and supplies to the hundreds of ships that passed the Cape of Good Hope en route to the Indies.

The Square was originally known as the Burgher Watch Square and was built on the corner of Short and Longmarket streets in 1696. It soon became a fruit and vegetable market, obviously from where the name derives and in 1961 it was declared a national monument tied to the history of slavery. Slaves used a tavern next to the Old Town House for drinking and gambling. There was also a fountain on the square from which slaves fetched water.

Important notices and proclamations were read from the balcony of the Town House, including the slave code, which read:

* Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes.
* Any slave who stops in the street to talk to other slaves may be beaten.
* No meeting in bars, no buying of alcohol, no groups on public holidays.
* No gathering near church doors during a service.
* Any slave out after dark must carry a lantern.
* Curfew - slaves must be indoors by 22:00.
* No singing, whistling or noise at night.
* Not allowed to own and carry guns.
* Flogging and chaining for insulting a free man or making false accusations.
* Any slave who dares to strike a slave-holder must be put to death.
* Free black women are not allowed to be as well dressed as respectable burghers' wives and they must carry passes.

Presently, in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the Square is being fairly extensively upgraded.

What will happen after the soccer World Cup is over?

This an interesting article by Christopher Merret, which I think really should become part of the public debate. It was printed in the Witness 30 Jun 2009

Christopher Merret
FOOTBALL is often described as the “beautiful game”. Indeed, it is. As Michael Worsnip pointed out recently (The Witness, June 12), football on the local recreation ground reduces the possibility that young people will be tempted into crime. And, of course, South Africa will host a successful Fifa World Cup next year — if it tries hard enough. All of this is obvious. But what is crucially missing from public debate are a number of awkward political, economic and social questions.
All international sports federations, including the Olympic movement, are now a significant component of globalisation. Run by overpaid bureaucrats accountable to no one, they oversee minor empires — as large as the economies of small countries — that sell sport as a commodity. It is all a far remove from the neighbourhood park. What is needed by this new form of colonialism is an acceptable level of infrastructure and a scenic backdrop, and that’s why South Africa was awarded the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Big businessmen will make a killing, politicians will have a platform on which to promote themselves and scores of already grotesquely rich footballers will have the opportunity to maximise their income.
South Africa is just a stage for this extravaganza. Its citizens are told that it will create jobs and lay the foundations of a booming tourist industry. Yes, it has helped the construction industry at a difficult time — stadia and hotels have mushroomed. But there is something obscene about Durban’s new stadium. Named after one of the province’s most famous communists, it overlooks some of the world’s fastest-growing slums. Why should their residents buy the argument that Moses Mabhida Stadium is a better investment than houses, street lights and sanitation? In the rhetoric of the African National Congress this is a developmental state. Why are its resources not more effectively directed at improving the condition of the very poor; rather than offered on bended knee to the czars of international football?
The crucial year is not 2010, about which South Africans have been badgered endlessly — but 2011. After the 2004 Olympics, Athens was left with crumbling, redundant facilities. We shall have white elephant football stadia, to which the future viability has been given little thought. South Africans are football mad, but they generally avoid club matches in massive numbers. The signs are that rugby will be coerced into using the new stadia against its wishes. The construction of Cape Town’s Green Point Stadium was a colossal waste. Newlands could have been renovated, or a modest stadium built for the people of the Cape Flats. But a better view of Table Mountain was required by Fifa. People like Sepp Blatter have set an agenda for South Africa to their own ends. After 2010 they will move on elsewhere, leaving a raft of unresolved problems.
Is tourism the future for South Africa? Globalisation destroyed the textile and footwear industries that provided lifetimes of work and brought stability to many communities. Now it gives back sightseers and tourism, a notoriously fragile industry. The fans who come to South Africa may well have a safe and secure trip. But this will require a new version of apartheid. South Africa is a place of violent and premature death — murder and road fatalities account for up to 30 000 fatalities, the population of a small town, every year. Visitors will need to stay away, or be protected, from the real South Africa.
Unprecedented resources will be thrown at shielding visitors — in effect altering the social geography of South Afric­a — and the rest of us will be more vulnerable than before. Hopefully it will work out successfully. But this will raise a further crucial question: why can we not make a similar go of the Department of Home Affairs, South African Airways, the Land Bank, Eskom and hospitals? Or are they condoned failures, their dysfunctionality part of political infighting and a culture of plunder?
In effect, the World Cup marks the nationalisation of football: it is rapidly becoming the sports department of the ANC, an internationally sanctioned method of distracting attention from serious national shortcomings. Once the party is over, rugby will be put in its subordinate place, a not unwarranted fate: it was after all suffered by African football in the apartheid years. In the meantime, any questioning or criticism of the holy event will be labelled unpatriotic.
But this is politics, not sport; and it’s imperative to keep on probing and asking questions.
The very worst outcome would be an imposed national consensus that the World Cup is beyond criticism. And that is a very real danger.

2010 World Cup Legacy - 1 year to go

I remember exactly what I was doing when the Sepp Blatter announced that South Africa would be the 2010 host for the FIFA World Cup. I was trying to get one of my children trussed up in a car-seat in a shopping centre in, Rivonia. There was no warning, but suddenly the centre erupted into screams and shouts and dancing and car hooting. Taxis started behaving like jumping castles. Vuvuzelas appeared out of nowhere and deafened innocent passers-by. Hitherto silent shops suddenly produced massive loudspeakers and made shopping an even more unpleasant experience than it already was. People were very happy, that is the truth.

Well, to be honest, mostly black people were happy. White people were either irritated, or long-suffering, or habitually sceptical. And during the past year and a half that I have been working in the 2010 environment, I would have to say that the amount of white people who, (when they discovered what I do for a living, looked pseudo-concerned and said the words “Do you think we will be ready?” compared to the number of blacks asking the same question), outnumber them by 65 to 1.

It is, of course, common cause that in South Africa, peculiarly, football is a game mostly supported by black people. This is not something germane to the game itself. It isn’t as though you need a dark skin to run up and down a soccer pitch and kick a ball into the goals. The fact that mostly blacks support and play football in this country is no accident at all. There is a social and political history behind this fact, which is to be found in the way in which one game – Rugby – was resourced, encouraged and managed by a government that wanted to maintain it for the benefit of the white race group, to the detriment of another – Football.

At schools; around the braai; on television; in church; on the farm – everywhere, white boys were encouraged to play Rugby. And when they did so, they were provided with extraordinary incentives, scholarships, prizes, prizes and laudation. It was promoted everywhere. It became part of white identify. (And I am not denying that there were extraordinarily significant black examples of rugby prowess during this time – but they did so against all the odds.)

Blacks were expected to play soccer – even encouraged to play soccer – but they were given no resources to do so. And it is this point –coming at the issue from the perspective of our skewed history, which should make the FIFA 2010 World Cup so sweet. The massive expenditure on stadia, is but one aspect of redress. It is strange to me, that some people (even today!) appear to resent them. “But couldn’t that money have been spent on housing?!” they argue, as if this is some kind of new insight. I dare say it could have been. But if it were, would we have achieved the level of international interest in the country that 2010 will bring? Would we have the massive tourism spin-off which will last for many years to come? Would we have had the infrastructure upgrades in roads, airports, railway stations that have been fast-tracked and brought forward because of the benefits of requirements and the benefits of the tournament? No, we would not. We would have houses – and believe me, I don’t want to knock houses, but that is all we would have.

There is one question, however, which I don’t know the answer to. Can we ensure that the stadia are going to be used after 2010? That is, it seems to me, a very important question and I think it is one which is going to need to be addressed long before the final whistle of the FIFA 2010 World Cup. What I do know is that the World Cup will give us better resources for football than we have ever had before. The imbalance will be well redressed ion the area of infrastructure. But the legacy, if it is to be sustained, will need to be not so much in looking outwards, to foreign nations coming to play on our soil, but amongst our own people.

In other words, it really is no good redressing the balance, if football is not properly resourced; if coaches are not adequately trained; if clubs are not encouraged and schools do not have basic facilities. The next step beyond building stadia, is building capacity. If we are serious and as single-minded about this as we have been about building infrastructure, the results will be staggering. It is not too difficult to show that young people in sport are less likely to participate in any number of available forms of anti-social behaviour. In a phrase coined by the Department in which I work – “A child in sport is a child out of court”. That needs to be the legacy of 2010, if anything is.