Africa still a World Cup winner despite humiliation on the pitch for its teams

[Hetty ter Haar]

Africa still a World Cup winner despite humiliation on the pitch for
its teams

The World Cup has come at a moment when politicians and investors are
arguing that the bad old days of wars, dictatorships and corruption
are over

David Smith in Johannesburg
Sunday June 27 2010
The Observer


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/27/world-cup-south-africa


It was the best of times, it was the worst of teams. Two weeks into
the World Cup, Africa is basking in the success of organising the
biggest sports event on the planet - but already conducting a
postmortem into why its finest talents froze on home ground.

Commentators have praised South Africa for defying the pessimists by
staging a smoothly run tournament with a friendly atmosphere and few
hiccups. They see it is a turning point for the continent, an "Africa
Rising" dawn.

On the field, however, Africa has been sinking. For months politicians
have cranked up unrealistic expectations that one of the continent's
six competing teams could possibly even win it. They are not saying
that now.

Algeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and hosts South Africa crashed
out in the first round with just two wins between them. Only Ghana
survived to fly the flag in last night's second round match with the
United States. It left the first African World Cup with a distinctly
traditional line-up of Europeans and South Americans.

Chastened, the hosts scaled down their ambitions. "South Africans are
already winners," president Jacob Zuma said last week. "We won on 15
May 2004 when the announcement was made, declaring us as the hosts.
The whole world is looking at us and applauding our success so far as
hosts. And we have proven ourselves to be fantastic hosts."

South Africa does indeed appear to have proved the doubters wrong,
though complacency would still be dangerous. Matches have kicked off
on time, stadiums have been (mostly) full, floodlights have stayed on
and even the great bogeyman, crime, appears to have retreated in the
teeth of a huge police operation.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said: "Over the past few weeks South
Africa has experienced an extraordinary revival of its national
spirit."

Some say all of Africa is the winner, too. The World Cup has come at a
moment when politicians and investors are already arguing that
corruption, disease, famine, poverty and war should no longer be hung
around the continent's neck. They say its economies are growing, its
dictatorships are waning and it has seen no new major wars in the past
five years. Hosting the world's biggest sports showpiece is the
ultimate symbol of a developing, normalising Africa.

All of which stands in directly inverse proportion to the impact of
Africans on the pitch here. Does Africa's on-field disaster spoil its
off-field triumph?

"Absolutely not," argues Steve Bloomfield [http://
goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/ghana-alone-carries-burden-of-
africas-expectations" title="], author of Africa United: How Football
Explains Africa. "I'd wait until 12 July to completely crow but it's
now clear that some of the stories about how bad South Africa was
going to be as host were ludicrously over the top.

"The image we have in the west of war, famine and corruption is part
of the African story, but only part. The World Cup will help chip away
at that image. It has the potential to change the way the continent is
seen."


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