2010 World Cup

I have been wondering about this World Cup for some time now. Sure from the offset it looks like a really good thing, creating jobs, bringing in tourism, uplifting surrounding areas. I admit that I was one of the guys who were ecstatic and screamed that one cold morning in Caprice when we saw Sepp opened the envelope and it said South Africa! After the euphoria off that day has worn off, we can re look at this whole thing out of sober eyes.

The fact of the matter is, that the jobs this will create, are all very temporary and will terminate after 2010. So all those people that are employed for the huge event, will be jobless again after 11 July 2010.

As for the tourists it will bring in. These will be soccer mad fans, who will be the cream of the crop from their countries, because travelling to South Africa is so time consuming and expensive, that not everybody will be able to do it.

The upliftment of the surrounding areas is a joke. The only previously disadvantaged area this world cup is uplifting is Soweto, with the redevelopment of Soccer City. the other areas are places like Green Point, Bloemfontein, Elllis Park, Durban, Port Elizabeth....none of which really need upliftment. Then there are the citizens living in the cities where these events are going to be held. Most of the people renting, are worried and scared for where they are going to live, because their landlords might not extend their leases into 2010, because everybody that owns a house has become a entrepreneur now all of a sudden, and wants to rent their houses out for astronomical amounts.

So I have to ask myself, why do we spend all these billions of rand on 'trying' to get ready to host this international event, for one month, displacing thousands even hundreds of thousands of honest, tax paying citizens, so that everything can return to normal again after the month, and the HUGE stadiums we build can become the white elephants they were intended for.

This is of course if we can get our shit together, and actually finish the projects, and establish the infrastructure before the opening ceremony of the world cup. Hey if we are lucky, we only loose a few billion and the world cup can go to Germany. Imagine how many houses you can build with the R10bn being spent on the world cup, or how many South Africans you can feed....