Lives on pause for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™

I woke up feeling troubled on Friday, June 4, six days before the start of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™.

It’s Football Friday and I am supposed to be wearing a soccer T-shirt, but I cannot bring myself to do it. I am not against soccer or Bafana Bafana. I support learners in Mqanduli where I work in education. But, like other places in the country, learners in this area have been forced to put their lives on pause for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™.

Which makes me wonder: who is the FIFA World Cup™ for? It is in South Africa, yes, but what is South Africa? Is it just Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg? I look at the learners in Mqanduli, I see their excitement about the World Cup, but also I see their disappointment. None of them has money to see even one game, there is no big public viewing area and many of them do not have electricity or even a 54cm TV at home from which they could watch the tournament.

I am not arguing that every village across South Africa should have access to a public viewing area, I am just trying to understand – if Kliptown in Soweto could be given a flat screen, why not a village in the former Transkei?
If there was money, maybe I would argue that it should go into ensuring that every village has access to clean water, electricity and a public library.

Maybe we are asking too much, but it seems to me that as South Africans we are so focused on projecting to the world an image of sophistication and development that we didn’t spend much time thinking about the impact of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ on the poor.

All the money has been diverted away from building clinics, libraries and bringing water into villages, and into building stadiums. Even though learners in rural areas have little to do with the World Cup, they will pay the highest price at the end of the year, when matriculation results reach a new low because FIFA and the government declared a month-long school boycott.

There will be a lot of talk about catching up on lost time after the World Cup, but, as usual, the talk will not translate into school-based support to make this a reality.

You might say I am envious of those who will see the world play on South African turf, and you would be right: I am. So are the millions of poor South Africans who are supposed to be behind the world but who just can’t quite be part of it.

It is probably more accurate to say I am angry, not at being cut out of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, but at the fact we have pause the educational lives of our rural children; these are children who cannot afford a day away from school.
 
2010 school failure is here; I can feel it.