The Political Economy of Mega-Stadiums and the Underdevelopment of Grassroots Football in South Africa

Abstract

As South Africa prepares to host the 2010 World Cup finals, public and scholarly discourses have largely overlooked the consequences of interactions between global sport, professional leagues, and grassroots football. Yet analysing this dynamic is important because it challenges bold claims made by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and South African boosters about the 2010 World Cup's capacity to deliver economic, political, and social benefits to the nation-state. Drawing on South African government and media sources, FIFA documents, as well as interviews and secondary literature, this article examines the policy decisions that inspired the construction of a lavish new stadium on Green Point Common in Cape Town and then considers the potential effects of this strategy on sports in poor communities. Preparations for 2010 reveal how South Africa's engagement with global capitalism is not mitigating apartheid's cruel legacies of racism, widespread material poverty, and extreme inequality. Instead, as Ebrahim argues, preliminary evidence suggests that current World Cup strategies are actually undermining the grassroots game.

Notes

1. In a separate paper entitled ‘A Nation to be Reckoned With’: The Politics of Stadium Construction in South Africa', I argue that the 2010 World Cup can be understood mainly as a national project aimed to enhance the prestige and credibility of the South African nation-state and its leaders. For an earlier critical analysis of the South African bid committee's economic claims about the event's impact, see Alegi (2001).

2. A note about racial terminology: the apartheid regime classified South Africans into four main racial groups: White, Indian (or Asian), Coloured, and African. Coloured is a catch-all term that describes descendants of a wide variety of people, including indigenous Khoikhoi and San; slaves from Africa and Asia; and of racially mixed unions. I use the term ‘black’ to refer collectively to all groups of people who were (are) not white. The different racial terms are used only where appropriate, or when they appear in the sources; this usage however does not imply acceptance by the author.

3. Sporting culture in the Cape is also unusual because of the popularity of rugby and cricket among the black population; see Odendaal (1995, 2003), Allie (2000), and Nongogo (2004).

4. I was unable to find data to confirm this statement. Attempts to contact the office of SAFA Western Cape were unsuccessful.

5. Founded in 1996–1997, the PSL is the successor to the National Soccer League, formed on a non-racial basis in 1985 (Alegi, 2004, pp. 143–144).

6. Martin Pollack, ‘City Punts Athlone Stadium to “Positive” FIFA’, available at http://www.capetown.gov.za/clusters/viewarticle3.asp?conid = 11748 (accessed 6 March 2007).

7. Cape Town's World Cup business plan was later linked to consumption- and development-based policies articulated in the municipal Integrated Development Plan; the provincial Growth and Development Strategy; and the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA), which in 2006 replaced the ten-year-old GEAR macroeconomic strategy. While all sectors of government are expected to work together, the municipality's main duty is to ensure compliance with the obligations set in the Host City Agreement with FIFA; the Province is expected to focus more on development and promotion

8. Reuters, ‘FIFA Profits Boosted by World Cup Success’, 23 March 2007, available at http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug = reu-fifafinances&prov = reuters&type = lgns (accessed 2 April 2007). FIFA profits from 2006 totalled 303 Swiss francs (US$250 million), a huge increase from US$140 million on revenues of $1.65 billion in 2002. For budget data, see FIFA Financial Report 2004, p. 18, available at http:// www.fifa.com/documents/fifa/publication/FIFA_Financial_Report_E_2004.pdf (accessed 2 April 2007). FIFA's GOAL development project has had important ramifications in Africa, some of which are discussed in Darby (2002, pp. 156–159).

9. Martin Pollack, ‘Design and Planning Team for Green Point Chosen’, available at http://www.capetown.gov.za/clusters/viewarticle3.asp?conid = 12416 (accessed 6 March 2007). Note that FIFA requires a minimum seating capacity of 60,000 for a World Cup semi-final match.

10. For analysis of how political and economic elites in South Africa since the 1990s have mutually benefited from similar arrangements see Gumede (2002) and Adam et al. (1997, pp. 201–225).

11. Some scholars have noted that awarding the 2010 tournament to South Africa pays back African representatives who lent Sepp Blatter crucial electoral support in FIFA's 1998, 2002, and 2006 Presidential ballots (Darby, 2002; Cornelissen, 2004).

12. In the United States, the issue of publicly funded sport stadiums has received considerable scholarly attention. For example, see Trumpbour (2007); Noll and Zimbalist (1997); and Siegfried and Zimbalist (2000).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Alegi

*Assistant Professor, Department of History, Michigan State University, USA. Email: [email protected]. Thanks go to the author's research assistant Leslie Hadfield for her meticulous work in locating news reports on 2010 stadium construction, as well as to Scarlett Cornelissen, Rodney Reiners, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions. An earlier version of this paper benefited from feedback received at the 2007 African Studies Association meeting in New York during a panel on ‘Small Teams, Big Issues: Soccer, Citizenship and Politics Beyond Elite-level Football in Africa’, organised by Susann Baller.