The games we play

‘World Cup fever’, appar­ently, is ‘upon us’.  What with sev­eral dozen posters, tens of adver­tise­ments and an impres­sively bright pair of bill­boards, it’s not hard to see why. 

But, lest read­ers think me unpa­tri­otic, let’s give credit where credit is due.  To Ger­many, for example.  

 It’s a fine place, filled with the crisp and the pretty.  They have work­ing trains, an impres­sive his­tory of impe­ri­al­ist con­quest, a national mood of serene urgency, really awe­some cars, an inhu­manly capa­ble bureau­cracy, and the audac­ity to invade France every now and then.  They could also, come 2006, afford a Soc­cer World Cup.  Since it’s quite clear that we South Africans have none of the for­mer traits (save per­haps for the whole inva­sion thing, but only because the French are used to that sort of thing by now), we can at least take solace in the fact that we share the lat­ter.  Or do we?

 Firstly, and to avoid being called counter-revolutionary or some such thing, let me say that I am quite des­per­ately excited about this whole FIFA busi­ness.  Our cities will become great bright messes of tongues and crowds, our streets will bloom with all kinds of colour­ful thrills, and we’ll enjoy that hal­lowed thing that is the com­ing together of the Inter­na­tional.  I just get a lit­tle wor­ried, some­times, that all this is a bit fis­cally irresponsible.

 The gov­ern­ment has gone to great lengths to paint the event in the colours of eco­nomic growth, trans­for­ma­tion, inter­na­tional pres­tige, poverty alle­vi­a­tion, etc.  To their credit, they have also pru­dently rec­og­nized the poten­tial of such ‘mega-events’ to con­tribute lit­tle to broader national wel­fare; and have framed the plan­ning of the event in lan­guage of sus­tain­able grass-roots devel­op­ment, long-term employ­ment cre­ation and infra­struc­tural devel­op­ment.  This is all well and good.  I think we would all agree that to view such events as avenues of cost­less sal­va­tion, so to speak, would be both naïve and dan­ger­ous.  But despite such pretty lip ser­vice — such as has always been in abun­dance in post-apartheid South Africa – to the com­mon good, the plan­ning and host­ing of the World Cup seems to me to be missing…well, a great many things.

Firstly, there is the issue of wind­falls.  Many of us, I think, will find our­selves eas­ily beguiled by what seem to be tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties for rev­enue and growth.  But if we step out­side the glam­orous lan­guage of World Cup tri­umphal­ism for a moment, we will find that the eco­nom­ics of this event are by no means clear-cut.  Udesh Pil­lay and Orli Bass – an Exec­u­tive Direc­tor and Post-Doctoral Fel­low, respec­tively, at the Human Sci­ences Research Coun­cil – con­duct an inci­sive review of the effects of ‘mega-events’ on host economies.  A num­ber of sur­pris­ing, unset­tling obser­va­tions arise.  Chief among them is that it is by no means the case that the bulk of inter­na­tional lit­er­a­ture, which con­cerns such things as prior Olympic Games and World Cups, gives cause to be opti­mistic.  On the con­trary, and cit­ing a plethora of stud­ies (for­give me if I do not list them all; if you’re scep­ti­cal you are more than wel­come to source them from the Ref­er­ence List of their paper), the authors assert that the “inter­na­tional lit­er­a­ture reveals a grow­ing scep­ti­cism over the extent to which host­ing mega-events poten­tially results in eco­nomic growth or sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­men­tal impacts” (2008: 335).  Pil­lay and Bass them­selves, after review­ing the spe­cific case of South Africa, remain doubt­ful and some­what rue­ful regard­ing the way in which the event has been, and will be, conducted.

The logic of scep­ti­cism regard­ing the devel­op­men­tal impacts of the World Cup stems not from insid­i­ous under­cur­rents of trickssssy math­e­mat­ics, but from oft-repeated tit­bits of eco­nomic sense.  Firstly, we turn to the issue of the build­ing of sta­di­ums.  Wat in die don­der are we going to do with the things once they’ve been built?  Inglo­ri­ous amounts of money, to the tune of R10 bil­lion, have been brick-and-mortared into grand ovals that, appar­ently, are sup­posed to become national assets.  But how?  Oh, there is men­tion of this con­cert and that fes­ti­val arena, but it is my gen­eral intu­ition that, for once, pop music won’t be able to solve our prob­lems.  I sup­pose we could use them for more soc­cer – that is, of course, after we have instructed our Min­istry of Alchemy to curb its accursed obses­sion with base met­als and focus instead on turn­ing ball-kicking into gold.  Or per­haps we should dress them all up as pim­ples and charge Oxy an inor­di­nate amount for the right to demol­ish them.  We could always put roofs over them and turn them into com­mu­nity cen­tres, but that is of course for­get­ting the fact that using major pub­lic works pro­grams for the ben­e­fit of the poor is obscenely un-South African.  Per­son­ally, I think that we should do none of these things. Rather than apol­o­gise for the reck­less use of pub­lic resources, we should spite our crit­ics by ‘moer­ing’ through and gold-plating the sta­di­ums.  Noth­ing says ‘I Am a Big Coun­try That Should Be Taken Seri­ously Guys’ like 90-carat sport­ing grounds.

 Apart from ‘what now?’ prob­lems, there are those of the rip­ple effects of con­cen­trated devel­op­ment.  When you build sta­di­ums in poor com­mu­ni­ties, if Seph Blat­ter ever gives you the go-ahead to build sta­di­ums in poor com­mu­ni­ties, you increase the value of sur­round­ing prop­er­ties and cre­ate poten­tial spaces for urban devel­op­ment.  Increased value means increased rent, which in turn means that those wretched souls scrap­ing liv­ings off of the side­walks will most likely no longer be able to afford liv­ing there.  Think Dis­trict Six, peo­ple.  The thing to remem­ber about a ris­ing tide is that it makes waves.  A fur­ther prob­lem to con­sider is that of immi­gra­tion.  Per­ceived gains from the World Cup will doubt­less bring mas­sive swells of peo­ple from neigh­bour­ing nations; peo­ple look­ing for work.  Thus, it is entirely pos­si­ble that even if employ­ment oppor­tu­nity is greatly expanded unem­ploy­ment rates will rise.  And when things start to slow down?  When short-lived hives release their worker bees?  Well, let’s just say that when that time comes I’m going to be ter­ri­bly relieved that us South Africans are so ter­ri­bly, hor­ri­bly fond of foreigners. 

Now that we have made cur­sory men­tion of it, let’s move to the issue of jobs.  Is it not the case that tremen­dous pub­lic spend­ing, an influx of vis­i­tors and all that will cre­ate work so every­one can work so our coun­try can work so the World Cup works?  Work work work!  What about work?  As com­mon sense will tell you, most of the jobs that will be cre­ated for the World Cup will rep­re­sent “mostly short-term and/or tem­po­rary employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties involv­ing finite num­bers” (Pil­lay and Bass, 2008: 330).  It would do us well to remem­ber that the World Cup is not so much a pro­gram as a project.  Of the 24 spend­ing projects out­lined by the gov­ern­ment, 6 can be prop­erly said to be extra-event.  These are: Trans­port infra­struc­ture, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and Broad­cast Infra­struc­ture, Tourism, City Beau­ti­fi­ca­tion, Pub­lic health and Envi­ron­men­tal reha­bil­i­ta­tion.  A perusal of the rest will deliver only the notion of inci­den­tal ben­e­fits.  Of these 6, how many can be said to be prop­erly labour-intensive?  Fur­ther, how many grap­ple with the real issues fac­ing our nation?  This is a point we will return to in a moment.

Another issue is con­trol of the event.  Even if there were a coher­ent, eco­nom­i­cally sound plan for a truly devel­op­men­tal World Cup, it stands to rea­son that FIFA would f*** it all up.  Again, com­mon sense kicks in – or rather, dances in on the graves of our flut­tery lit­tle hopes.  The World Cup is not a human­i­tar­ian inter­ven­tion; it’s a busi­ness event.  As such, stake­hold­ers will seek return on their (con­sid­er­able) invest­ments, and rightly so.  What else would any­one expect?  As Cor­nelis­sen notes in his dis­cus­sion of the effects of and ratio­nale behind major sport­ing events, “Africa’s host­ing of the FIFA finals will to a sig­nif­i­cant degree be scripted by forces aris­ing from the broader polit­i­cal econ­omy of global sport, where com­mer­cial imper­a­tives and the inter­ests of FIFA and its asso­ciates may be the actual deter­mi­nants of the even­tual course and con­se­quences of the tour­na­ment” (2007: 253).  He cites the issue of the loca­tion of sta­di­ums, which flares up as the most vis­i­ble of thwarted attempts at broader socio-economic devel­op­ment.  While the friendly folks in our gov­ern­ment wanted more bergie-budging for their buck, the aus­tere Euro­pean types down at FIFA wanted places where their Aryan blood wouldn’t be so eas­ily spilled.  In other words, our pri­or­ity of build­ing sta­di­ums in poor neigh­bour­hoods (such as Athlone) was not one shared by the Powerful.  

With plenty of ugly chunks taken out of this far-flung idea of the World Cup eco­nomic pie, it would do us well to put the event in per­spec­tive.  In a laud­able effort to assess the threats to and oppor­tu­ni­ties of our dear econ­omy, an Inter­na­tional Panel of econ­o­mists (hail­ing pre­dom­i­nantly from Har­vard Uni­ver­sity) was com­piled and tasked, essen­tially, with steer­ing us in the right direc­tion.  Their con­clu­sions are sum­ma­rized suc­cinctly by Ricardo Haus­mann, the Chair­man of the panel.  I need not bore you with soul-pocking facts regard­ing low growth rates, hideous unem­ploy­ment rates and inequal­ity that would offend even Vic­to­rian sen­si­bil­i­ties.  It will suf­fice to say that, in their report, this panel made a num­ber of key rec­om­men­da­tions regard­ing the need to struc­turally reform our econ­omy.  A vital point to note is that, at the out­set of their inves­ti­ga­tion, they came to the con­clu­sion that even South Africa’s cur­rent aver­age rate of growth (about 3% since 2004) is unsus­tain­able, given the cur­rent makeup of our econ­omy.  What this means is that, hav­ing achieved barely half of our 6% tar­get, we have already out­stripped our exist­ing potential.  

Any hope of truly turn­ing our­selves around does not lie in projects, be they well-intended or not, but in the reform of the basic ele­ments of our econ­omy.  Many will con­tend that, as an infra­struc­tural boon, the World Cup will build upon nec­es­sary fun­da­men­tals.  Many will also see the increased fis­cal spend­ing as nec­es­sary counter-balances to the near the­atri­cal slow­downs the world has suf­fered.  Unfor­tu­nately, one of our biggest prob­lems is our cur­rent account deficit, which in its even­tual repay­ment (it has to be repaid, sooner or later) will place tremen­dous pres­sure on this, our domes­tic econ­omy.  Our exter­nal posi­tion is weak, our exports have been in con­stant decline since before 1990, and we have increas­ingly shifted our share of employ­ment away from trad­ables to the tem­pera­men­tal, skill-intensive ter­tiary sec­tor.  No one is going to sail in from the Mediter­ranean and deliver us booty, in other words.  

Splashes of spend­ing on the World Cup are con­cen­trated and, upon close inspec­tion, rather super­fi­cial.  The con­cept of ‘infra­struc­ture’ is nar­rowly defined and nar­rowly applied to already urban­ized, already mod­ern­ized areas.  Even the Gau­train, so loved by the head­lines, is by no means rep­re­sen­ta­tive of broad-based infra­struc­tural devel­op­ment.  As Cor­nelis­sen states,

“The cur­rent polit­i­cal econ­omy of trans­port in South Africa, still heav­ily dif­fer­en­tial in the social geog­ra­phy of and access to trans­port resources, and skewed toward the use of pri­vate rather than pub­lic trans­port, coun­ters any ratio­nal argu­ments that seek to jus­tify the costs of the con­struc­tion of this spe­cific net­work against its pro­jected ben­e­fits. Cer­tain bureau­cratic and spe­cial inter­est groups played a fun­da­men­tal role in dri­ving the devel­op­ment of the Gau­train, and many of them used the award­ing of the rights to host the 2010 World Cup as a ratio­nal­i­sa­tion for a project which was ini­ti­ated long before the country’s sport bid had been car­ried through (2007: 256)”

Job cre­ation is sector-specific and will be largely imper­ma­nent.  Vis­i­tors will spend on retail and tourism, them­selves often fickle and socially miserly indus­tries, and then they will leave.  Sta­di­ums will take in deep breaths of peo­ple, but only for a month before they choke.  We will be happy for a while.        

To sum up, it does not seem to be the case that the World Cup will bring us net eco­nomic ben­e­fit.  The mas­sive amounts of spend­ing, given our cur­rent account deficit, are cer­tain to catch up with us.  What then?  With sta­di­ums lying dead across the land and our trans­port infra­struc­ture car­ry­ing the already-employed, we will be hard pressed to source jobs and liveli­hoods from the lit­ter of our party.  It’s far, far too late to do much about it but — at the risk of mur­der­ing sliv­ers of our col­lec­tive joy – we must ask our­selves whether, in this our sports-frenzied nation, we have not been too eas­ily duped into believ­ing that this is some­thing we should want.    

What we need in South Africa is not pretty parades of con­fetti and crowds; what we need is a seri­ous assess­ment of our growth poten­tial and the where­withal to real­ize it.  Eco­nom­i­cally, and espe­cially in devel­op­ing nations such as ours fac­ing what often look like insur­mount­able prob­lems, we must mea­sure our deci­sions accord­ing to their oppor­tu­nity costs.  I am not assert­ing that the World Cup will not bring ben­e­fits.  What I am assert­ing is that our money would be far bet­ter spent else­where.  Edu­ca­tion, health­care and hous­ing are projects that appear at a glance, and yet fig­ure as infi­nitely more pro­duc­tive uses of pub­lic rev­enue than the sub­si­diza­tion of glit­ter­ing leisure.  “Pro­vid­ing fes­ti­vals when peo­ple need bread”, after all, “is a dubi­ous use of pub­lic resources” (Andra­novich et al. 2001:127, as quoted in Pil­lay and Bass, 2008: 336).

The point I’m try­ing to make with all of this is not that World Cups should be bright knights of super-development, but rather that we should have no illu­sions about their real effects.  It is disin­gen­u­ous of our gov­ern­ment, and of any­one else, to sell our host­ing of the event as some kind of devel­op­men­tal panacea.  It is equally disin­gen­u­ous of any of us to cham­pion the cause of this parade for any other rea­son than our own cheer­ing sat­is­fac­tion.  Appeals to national pres­tige, ‘putting South Africa on the map’, boosts to morale and sim­i­lar ephemeral ram­bling wilt in the face of truly dele­te­ri­ous effects that, while delayed, will come.  If any­thing, we are speak­ing the voices of our own class, in our own tongues, with the kind of rel­ish that eas­ily for­gets how eas­ily the trickle-down becomes the pooling-up.  We may well want this shiny won­der, but the truth of it is we can­not afford it — at least, not if we are truly after the national good.  Soc­cer is, after all, just a game, and we are all just playing.  

Matthew MacDe­vette is an Hon­ours stu­dent in Pol­i­tics, Phi­los­o­phy and Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­sity of Cape Town.

Ref­er­ences

Andra­novich, G., Bur­bank, M. J., & Hey­ing, C. H. (2001). Olympic cities: lessons learned from mega-event pol­i­tics. Jour­nal of Urban Affairs, 23(2), 113–131.

Bass, O. & Pil­lay, U.  2008.  Mega-events as a Response to Poverty Reduc­tion: The 2010 FIFA World Cup and its Urban Devel­op­ment Impli­ca­tions.  Urban Forum, 19: 329–346 [pub­lished online]

Cor­nelis­sen, S.  2007.  Craft­ing Lega­cies: The Chang­ing Polit­i­cal Econ­omy of Global Sport and the 2010 FIFA World Cup.  Poli­tikon, 34 (3): 241–259 

Haus­mann, R. 2008.  Final Rec­om­men­da­tions of the Inter­na­tional Panel on ASGISA.