In the first of a series on the World Cup, South African sports fanatic Hilton Heydenrych takes a long hard look out of his back door at the madness and the mayhem of the upcoming football circus…

When I first thought about describing the situation in South Africa during the build-up to the World Cup, my dominant response was that I could think of almost nothing positive to write about. Anger at FIFA’s broken promises, contempt for the fools who believed them, revulsion at the cost of the whole affair (in a recession-ridden, development context), embarrassment  at the prospect of incomplete preparations, despair at the dismal performances of the national team, fear of terrorism – it all just seemed pretty miserable.

At the root of many of these problems were the economic expectations created when South Africa won the bid in 2004.  Sure, people were excited about having the world’s greatest footballers come to town, but the overriding sentiment was that everyone was going to make a lot of money.  From real-estate developers to street vendors, all imagined hordes of naïve football tourists paying elevated prices for their products.  I’m not sure if this “economic boon” idea was created by the government or FIFA or the media, or if it was just collective greed running wild in the mind’s eye, but as the event has drawn closer, it has given rise to no end of bitterness and recrimination.

Vendors have been aghast and disappointed to find that, under FIFA’s strict merchandising rules, they will not be allowed to sell their self-made World Cup souvenirs, and nor will they be able to open a soft-drinks stand next to the stadium entrance.  And stories abound of guesthouses that have spent hundreds of thousands of Rand upgrading their facilities to meet the exacting standards of Match (the FIFA-sanctioned accommodation agency run by Sepp Blatter’s  ephew), only to have Match cancel their bookings when the demand failed to materialise (the expected number of foreign visitors has been downgraded from half-a-million to 300,000 in recent months).  I must admit, during recent renovations on my house, I spent a few extra thousand turning our basement into a granny-flat, with the vague thought that I’d recuperate some of the expenses by letting it out during the World Cup. Fortunately, I didn’t factor that imagined income into the bond-repayments.

For half-a-decade, road and air-commuters around the country have had to negotiate congestion and detours, making way for construction and renovation of highways, airports, bus-rapid-transit systems, and the controversial and wildly ambitious Gautrain (in Gauteng – “Place of Gold” – province, home of the  Johannesburg/Pretoria  megalopolis). And as the countdown of years has changed to months, the annoyance of these traffic inconveniences has morphed into a national doubt of whether it would all be finished in time – not alleviated by the constant barrage of local and foreign media hype about the lunacy of holding such a major international event in the developing world.

Each national predicament of the last five years – crime, xenophobic violence, presidential scandals, the half-crazed ravings of Julius Malema (mercurial leader of the ANC Youth League), the murder of racist icon Eugene Terreblanche, construction and transport strikes – has been magnified into a catastrophe by the ubiquitous World Cup lens.

And then there have been the frustrations around the event itself. FIFA’s opaque ticketing system – a myriad of random lotteries, direct-sale frenzies, more random lotteries, and sudden unexplained releases of more tickets, all conducted by a confusing combination of banks, internet sites and over-the-counter sales-centres – has left even the most sophisticated fans angry (again fuelled by a media storm).  Personally, I was gutted when a friend was informed three days after the first random draw that she had received all her requested tickets; only to ignite with joy when I received the same news a week later – several days after the FIFA-advertised final date for being informed; and then have to commiserate (without appearing to gloat) with others who’d received nothing. And the average South
African football fan is not sophisticated – the predominant method of getting into local games (even those involving the national team) is to pitch up on match-day and buy your ticket at the gate – or, at most, buy it at the local sports club, butcher or grocery store a couple of days beforehand.

How this will turn out on the day remains to be seen.