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Ratio Blog: Sod the Poor

Tuesday, 22 June 2010

In principle, having all East African Community budgets read at the same time is great – you know, the symbolism and all that. Regional integration at work. In reality, it’s a bit of a pain for analysts and journalists and anyone else who need to pay attention because it’s a mad scramble to digest everything so that you can sound really professional and smart and well informed just hours later.

And this year, it felt even more hectic, wedged in between Joe Biden’s visit, the thankfully arrested serial killer, and the start of the World Cup. President Kibaki, for one, avoided half of those issues by not hanging around for the budget: He probably knocked off work early to chuck his toothbrush and PJs into his bag and then trailed Joe Biden’s plane out of Kenya to South Africa. After all, the Son of Jomo should be old enough by now to handle these money matters on his own, no?

Because I procrastinate so well, especially over serious matters like budgets, four of them no less, I decided to tag along with Mr. Prez, at least in writing. I suspect that as a golfer, mzee may have as little interest in football as I have, and was just looking for a good party. But despite my profound lack of interest in football, I support the World Cup in principle (as long as I don’t actually have to watch any footie).

It’s a great opportunity for South Africa to host visitors and media from around the world. But one of my focus group members (by which I mean opinionated Facebook buddies) was irritated that her European TV channel seemed to have an insurmountable compulsion to intersperse every World Cup broadcast with “lions and the woyeye mama songs and ululating” to remind everyone that the World Cup was IN AFRICA. Another commenter was annoyed by the “BBC's constant harping on about the poor in South Africa and how the World Cup will offer opportunities for prosperity. ... They can never really tell a positive story about Africa and leave it at that. .. Their addiction to images of swollen bellied children outside mud huts and shacks is quite obscene.”

This reminded me of a wild strop I had two or three months ago with someone in the UK who, never having set foot on the continent, argued earnestly that the best thing the International Community could do for South Africa at this stage was to cancel the farce that was the World Cup. Because it was all mired in corruption, and the poor wouldn’t benefit, and anyways, it would just all end in tears. I challenged her: Leave alone that South Africa’s government has invested heavily in infrastructure and services for the event – even if all business accrued to big companies only, did she have a look at the impact on employment, on turnover, on taxes paid? Did she look at suppliers to hotels and touring companies? Did she have any idea of how B&B owners, transport companies, curio vendors and many others had prepared for the surge in visitor numbers? Did she have any clue of location marketing?

Of course it is justified to look at FIFA’s dealings (or, for that matter, the fantastic ‘facilitation’ coughed up by countries competing to host the Olympics) with suspicion, and large infrastructure projects often involve corrupt contractor relationships. But South Africa is no different from any of the other World Cup locations. Did anyone look at Germany and triumphantly state ‘Ah-ha-HA!! Massive mark ups in that construction contract – better take the whole thing away from Germany immediately!’? For that matter, did anyone obsess about farmers in the Bavarian border regions not ‘benefiting’ from the World Cup?

And finally – it’s a party. A great big noisy party. Many, many South Africans are excited to host an event of this scale – and so are, from what I can see, many other countries besides South Africa. How patronising to tell them that it should be cancelled because ‘the poor don’t benefit’. Typing away, I just listened with half an eye to the Black Eyed Peas, in South Africa to perform at the opening concert, talking about how they will travel back home and tell people how fantastic South Africa is and that it’s not all poverty and misery and huts. I wish that they could just travel back and say, hey, fantastic event, great country, cool clubs, had a great time. But maybe we’re getting to the day when we can do Africa without a knee-jerk mention of poverty. Or lions. I’d say sod the poor, but I suspect that’d come out the wrong way.

Republished with kind permission from The Star.

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