South African World Cup

Fan park in Johannesburg, opening match with South Africa.

It is difficult to overstate the significance of this World Cup to South Africa, or to overstate the pride and excitement you can feel from South Africans.

On arrival, the first thing you notice are the flags. Johannesburg is papered with flags. The freeway to the city is lined with the flags of the participating countries for 20 km. Every other car has a South African flag flying from the back window (often paired with an English flag, or a German one, or the US flag). People have South African flags painted on their cheeks, flying from their rooftops, laid out with colored rocks in the road medians. There is a palpable sense of pride--of a kind of the-world-needs-to-know-about-South-Africa--on the radio, on billboards, in conversations.

South African flag, one of millions flying in the country this month.

I was in South Africa in 2000 on the day that they were not awarded the 2006 World Cup. The FIFA governing board vote was expected to be close, but South Africa believed that they had the votes. They organized fan rallies across the country to watch the vote on large screens setup in public squares. On the day of the decision, one of the 24 representatives, who had publicly committed to the South African bid, received a death threat and chose to abstain in the vote. The final vote was 12-11 in favor of Germany (the tiebreaking vote was to be the FIFA president, who had championed the South African bid). You can imagine the disappointment, followed by outrage, followed by disgust. Eventually FIFA altered the bid-selection process, virtually guaranteeing that South Africa would host the event in 2010.

I was back in 2004 just after the 2010 Cup was awarded. Even then, you could sense the excitement. The organization I worked for provided HIV education to teenagers, and immediately launched a "Be There in 2010" campaign (the idea being that you'd better make choices today to ensure that you would still be alive to see the matches). Plans even then were in the works to get stadiums built, hotels ready, transport expanded. And everyone, EVERYONE, was getting involved in cleaning, building, planning, developing for the event itself.

You would never know it from western media reports. For the last four years all you could read in US and European newspapers was about how the stadiums weren't finished, there wouldn't be enough hotel rooms, the transportation would be a mess, and even if all that worked you'd probably be car-jacked or raped before you got out of the airport. At best this was unfair coverage, at worst it was overtly racist.

Now here we are. We've attended four events in four days--we saw the opening concert in Soweto (the Black-Eyed Peas were good but Tutu really stole the show), we watched the opening match between South Africa and Mexico in a public viewing area in central Johannesburg, ran out to the US-England match on Saturday night in Rustenburg, and saw the Germany-Australia match last night in Durban's iconic new stadium. All have been well-organized (with the possible exception of the park&ride system). People are extremely friendly and welcoming and helpful. The stadiums are spectacular. The roads are flawless. The extra signage to and from the FIFA events is great.

In the end, barring some external event (there was a lot of worry about terrorism at the US-England match), the event will finally overshadow all of the negative publicity. We have already heard this from other visitors ("People are friendly, we are having a great time, we can't wait to tell our friends how beautiful South Africa is").

Durban stadium

The largest bloc of international visitors is here from the United States and, indeed, we have run into lots of Americans everywhere we have been so far. There were quite a few at the Germany-Australia match last night. For South Africa, the visitors from every country will become ambassadors, passing out the true story despite the misleading news reporting.