Damien Venuto
When it comes to the World Cup in South Africa FIFA have allegedly always had a secondary option available, should the host nation fail to deliver. This secondary option has never been more apparent than with the prospect of the first African World Cup. There was never any real possibility of the previous World Cups moving to a backup destination. So what then causes South Africa to be categorised so dubiously? What places such a dark fearful cloud over the prospect of the World Cup occurring in South Africa?
There is the issue of slow development which is very disconcerting. Stadium construction is consistently punctuated by an array of problems which vary from strikes to a dodgy electrical supply. The slow progress reminds the rest of the world that the concept of “African time” is not a myth as much as it is a reality. Things in Africa generally tend to take far longer than anyone expected, but in some cases they are eventually completed. Development is quite a severe encumbrance to the African prospect, but in all likelihood South Africa should scrape in before the deadline of the Confederations Cup in 2009.
This tournament will stand as a precursor of what South Africa will deliver during the 2010 World Cup. Should South Africa fail in this department then Sepp Blatter will have to invoke the forces of nature and beg an act of God to stop the World Cup from occurring. The emotive FIFA president did, after all, say that only a natural disaster could stop the World Cup from taking place in South Africa.
If Blatter did need help from nature he probably wouldn’t get it because the probability of a natural disaster occurring in South Africa is very low. Besides the odd flood or forest fire, South Africa has suffered very few natural disasters. In the conventional understanding of the term natural disaster, one would be inclined to think of earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes and tropical cyclones (hurricanes). The South African landscape is never battered by earthquakes, tidal waves or tornadoes. The East coast does sometimes suffer from the dissipated after-affects of a tropical cyclone, which has already journeyed over Madagascar, Mauritius and Southern Mozambique, but nothing too serious.
This effectively means that in the understanding of the term natural disaster, South Africa will host the World Cup in 2010. It must be remembered that Sepp Blatter is not the most conventional man. This is the same man who apologised to Australia after Italy won the tournament in 2006. Conventional knowledge is then irrelevant and it becomes important to define the rhetoric which Sepp Blatter has used in classifying a natural disaster as the only possible hindrance to the African World Cup. So what could natural disaster mean in the sense that Sepp Blatter utilises it?
High crime rates, poor public transport, abject poverty and political uncertainty could all fit the category of natural disaster. The safety of those who enter the country is paramount to the success of the tournament. South Africa has one of (if not the) highest crime rates in the world. Tourists are not immune and are often complacent enough to believe that they are. The extent of the danger to foreigners was clearly exhibited in the rape of an exchange student at a prominent South African university in 2007.
Tourists are often regarded as easy targets, and due to the inefficiency of public transport, they are placed in the precarious position of walking. Recent statistics suggest that the violent crime rate in South Africa is on the decline, but it is still laughable when compared to Germany, the Korea Republic, Japan, France or the United States of America. If there was a natural disaster to strike the Confederations Cup, it would come in the form of a vicious wave of crime.
So as a collection of countries wait in the wings for the opportunity to host the greatest sporting event in the world, South Africans sit with bated breath and hope that a wave of this calibre does not strike. Ultimately the Confederations Cup will determine the eventual host of this tournament so all the analysts can do is speculate.
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