Sarah goes soccer!

Sarah Osman (1980) was born in Sudan, and has been living in the Netherlands for the past 11 years. She’s been working in the field of development cooperation for the past 3 years, and has recently decided to take her skills and knowledge back to Africa. Her first stop is Cape Town, South Africa. After her column Wanted! Home in Africa for RNW, Sarah goes soccer.  In this latest column, she will share with us her experiences of the build-up to the 2010 World Cup in Cape Town. Not the mainstream news, but background stories that often get missed in the euphoria of the big event.

I spent an afternoon with Sikelela Mpama, an extremely well-spoken and inspiring 17 year old man who took the initiative to find out what Capetonians think of the World Cup. “I didn’t find any information in the newspapers about what the people thought about the World Cup, so I went out to ask them myself.”

By Sarah Osman, Cape Town

Taking part in the World Cup
Sikelela talked to mini-bus taxi drivers, construction workers at Greenpoint Stadium and football fans. “The opinions are mixed, some people think the World Cup is a good thing and others think it’s a waste of money. For me, it’s the same. It’s nice that we will have the World Cup here, but when you walk around some places like Delft and you see how unsanitary it is, you will definitely see that it’s a waste of money.” He told me that there are of course many opportunities for people, but many will be left behind. And it doesn’t just stop at the amount of money spent on the World Cup itself. “You know, I can tell you that 90% of us here in Cape Town will not get to see a single game. Most of us don’t have R240 to spend on a ticket for a game, so we will be watching the matches on TV. Some people also don’t have a TV, so they will be listening on the radios.”

Business
“The mini-bus taxi owners told me that 2010 will be killing their business. It won’t only be during the World Cup, but also afterwards because people will be taking the buses to work. They told me that they will be losing R1,000 a day because of the new bus system in Cape Town,” said Sikelela. “I saw that if the government had asked the people how to go about the World Cup, then things would have been different and maybe everyone would have been able to benefit from it.”

While I was in Johannesburg a few days ago, a city that seemed far less interested in the World Cup than Cape Town, I heard about similar frustrations from mini-bus drivers. During the run-up to Zuma’s election, they were promised huge business opportunities in 2010, but upgrading the official public transport services was chosen instead.

Safety
An aspiring journalist, Sikelela has been a social activist through the Children’s Movement for the past nine years. This background helped him to objectively question different aspects around the World Cup, including the safety in and around the stadiums. “The [construction] workers were worried about international players coming here because the locations around the stadiums are corrupt. And the police in Cape Town are afraid of the gangs, so I don’t know how they are going to manage that.” He seemed reluctant to draw big conclusions. “I talked to a lot of people but I want to question the CEOs of the construction companies and some government officials about what they think because I want some answers from them as well.”