World Cup post-mortem

Interested in how the hosting of the World Cup was being discussed in South Africa, I took a look at recent articles in my favorite South African newspaper, the Mail & Guardian. There are many articles that take on the question from a range of angles, from "Post-World Cup blues hit SA" to "Banks score from World Cup." I found this to be a particularly good one, "South Africans ponder life after the World Cup." It captures well the tension between optimism and anxiety which characterizes, in my experience, South Africa today. Here are some excerpts:

"That is something this World Cup has brought: nation building and social cohesion."

"The optimism of the early nineties was so unrealistically high that the only way was down. Many South Africans have since become disillusioned about political corruption and cronyism, a chronically slow response to the HIV/Aids epidemic and the failure to lift millions out of poverty.

There is now anxiety among South Africans about a similar fall from the euphoria of the World Cup. Can the momentum be sustained?"

"Not everyone shared in the World Cup honeymoon. Some missed the games because they had neither TVs nor electricity. People still died from Aids, or in poverty, or at the hands of criminals far from the world's cameras. Informal traders were driven out of stadium exclusion zones and protesters claimed they were evicted from their homes.

The voices of dissent, marginalised during the month-long jamboree, are returning to the fore: if we can spend billions on football grounds, why can we not build houses for the homeless or hospitals for the sick? They wonder why it took Fifa, an immovable deadline and a worldwide audience to concentrate minds.

Patrick Bond, director of the Centre for Civil Society, which ran a World Cup Watch project, says: 'The elite have pulled off bread and circuses for the masses. We live in one of the most unequal societies in the world, and we've just seen an amplification of that inequality. The costs will become increasingly clear.'

There are fears that an ugly side of patriotism is about to reveal itself with rumours of a fresh wave of xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals. Mindful of the violence that left 62 people dead two years ago, some are already fleeing back to their home countries or South Africa's rural areas. The army is on the streets and last week Reason Wandi, a Zimbabwean, told how he was thrown from a moving train

South Africans are accustomed to riding incredible highs and apocalyptic lows. They will go to work tomorrow knowing their moment in the sun has passed, and wondering with some anxiety what happens in the shade. But there will also be some lingering epiphanies and quiet satisfaction at what they achieved."

And, of course, South Africa's renowned editorial cartoonists Zapiro is offering his distinctive take on the nation post-World Cup, including the cartoon at the top of this post and this chilling reference to the xenophobic attacks that the article warns about: