As the World Cup nears the one week mark, at least part of South Africa’s dream has been badly dented if not crushed.
Their 3-0 defeat by Uruguay in a game where they played badly and showed little chance of scoring has finally ended a wave of overwhelming optimism that they could not only successfully stage Africa’s first World Cup but also avoid the shame of being the first host nation in the tournament’s history not to reach the second round.
The defeat on Wednesday night finally quietened the vuvuzela trumpets which have so irritated some foreign audiences, and left the nation saddened.
Their chances of qualifying for the second round have not disappeared but look very unlikely, and would require beating former champions France, which looks a distant prospect given their disorganised performance against a slick Uruguay.
But even if that bubble is burst, South Africa’s pride and the remarkable curative effective of the World Cup will not dissipate. Until a few months back, the local Bafana Bafana (the Boys) had been given little chance and were the lowest ranked team in the tournament. A run of 13 unbeaten games boosted a mood of nationalistic fervour.
But there are bigger questions over this World Cup than the performance of the host nation, however galling it would be to be eliminated early on.
The really deep questions are what will be the future economic impact on the country and will it bring the races closer, despite divisions that still split the population 16 years after the end of apartheid? South Africa spent more than $5 billion to stage this tournament, a giant logistical undertaking which the cynics said they could never pull off. Even after one week they have won enormous kudos already and confounded years of negative reporting.
Economists say the hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors and other factors will add 0.5 percent to South Africa’s GDP this year and brought massive infrastructure improvements including the country’s first high-speed urban train, new roads and improved bus services, especially to black townships starved of transport under apartheid.
The government and other supporters say the economic impact will be more important in the long run. A successful World Cup, introducing thousands of new people to this vast and beautiful country, is aimed at bringing in at least two million more tourists in the next few years, and encourage new investment both in South Africa and other parts of the continent–already a good bet for savvy investors looking at projected growth rates higher than much of the recession-hit world.
The other big question is what will be the impact on the race divide. Everybody agrees the short term impact has already been significant. Black and white supporters, all wearing the yellow national colours, mixed happily on Wednesday outside Pretoria’s Loftus Versfeld stadium, a temple to the rugby so beloved by Afrikaners who were the backbone of apartheid. Officials from President Jacob Zuma to chief local organiser Danny Jordaan say the World Cup is the most important event in the country since the first democratic elections in 1994 that brought Nelson Mandela to power.
But major racial changes will take much longer. Some 350 years of racial conflict cannot be overcome in 16 years. The World Cup impact may last longer but will slowly dissipate in the same way as the racial healing that followed South Africa’s victory in the 1995 rugby World Cup, when Mandela won the hearts of nervous whites by wearing the Springbok shirt at a time when civil war still seemed a possibility. That episode was depicted in the recent Clint Eastwood movie Invictus.
Only economic progress for South Africa’s army of poor and unemployed—a major driver of the country’s frighteningly high rates of violent crime – and the end of some of the globe’s biggest wealth disparities – will finally end racial divisions in this country, where all too often the clients in expensive restaurants are still almost all white and the waiters black.
And while the World Cup has avoided most of the disasters predicted by critics, not everything has gone smoothly. Stewards have had to be replaced in four stadiums because of wage disputes and powerful labour unions are threatening to embarrass the government in the world spotlight by going on strike if their demands are not met in the crucial transport and power sectors. Tournament transport has also been a problem, with fans reported stranded for hours by inefficient train and bus services away from stadiums.
The action on the pitch has also disappointed so far, despite the array of top marksmen like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. The goal scoring rate is currently way below the previous worse average in Italy in 1990.
But these are early days and whatever happens, Africa’s first World Cup still looks on course to perhaps overcome the notorious self doubt of South Africans and their sensitivity about world opinion – no doubt a legacy of their long isolation under apartheid.
Barry Moody, has worked for Reuters for over 35 years and is one of the company’s most experienced journalists. He was Middle East and Africa Editor based in London for seven years before moving to Nairobi early in 2006 to head a new drive to boost Reuters coverage of the continent. For the last year he has led advance logistical preparations and local coverage of the South African World Cup.
This commentary was provided to Yahoo! News by Reuters.com