Pan-Africanism and the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa

Abstract

This article explores how South Africa's 2010 hosting of the FIFA World Cup became an occasion to try to deepen nationalism and pan-Africanism in the midst of contending discourses that emphasised the economic and developmental meaning of the mega-event. The article uses Michael Billig's concept of ‘banal nationalism’ in combination with the Essex discourse approach to make sense of competing perspectives on the meanings of the World Cup. Its central thesis is that this meaning cannot be understood outside a history of a society emerging from apartheid oppression and racism and aspiring to be a nation and a developed state. The discourse approach makes it possible to read the World Cup as a social and political construction and assists in understanding different subject positions that human agents take up in order to make sense of the event within a society whose national cohesiveness is fragile.

Keywords:

• banal nationalism
• nation-building
• pan-Africanism
• sport mega-event
• 2010 FIFA World Cup

1. Introduction

Studies on the connections between sport and nation have multiplied in South Africa. Interest in this subject is understandable in a country that was isolated from the sporting world during the apartheid era and that has been host to a series of sport mega-events since the end of that era. To date, South Africa has hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the 1996 African Cup of Nations, the 2003 Cricket World Cup, the 2004 Women's Golf Cup and the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Why did South Africa become active in bidding for and hosting these mega-events? Scarlett Cornelissen and Kamilla Swart argue that South Africa has embraced the ideology of the ‘sport-media-tourism’ complex and is seeking to promote ‘an event-driven economy’ (2006:113). Sifiso Ndlovu notes that the leaders of the post-1994 government have understood how ‘sport had been successfully used for decades as an oppositional tool against the apartheid regime’ and are now determined to use it as an enabling diplomatic instrument to help South Africa assert its credentials on the African continent and across the world (2010:144–53).

Scholars such as Alegi (2001, 2004), Cornelissen and Swart (2006), Cornelissen (2007, 2010), Bolsmann and Brewster (2009), Desai and Vahed (2010) and Ndlovu (2010), who have studied South Africa's bidding politics and the overall articulation of the mega-events by the South African Government, have been able to distil some important features that reveal the official mind behind the hosting of mega-events. Five core motives stand out. First, mega-events were regarded as a mechanism to support the government's nation-building and reconciliation project. Second, they were viewed as engines and catalysts of economic development. Third, they were used to announce and project South Africa's presence in global governance. Fourth, they were used as moments to influence a paradigm shift in Western perceptions of Africa and this was also part of the African Renaissance agenda. Fifth, the hosting of these events was an opportunity to showcase an African culture of hospitality, solidarity and human-ness (ubuntu).

This article builds on previous analyses of the meaning of mega-events for South Africa by examining some of the discourses that circulated during the course of the 2010 World Cup. These were articulated by nationalists concerned about nation-building, left-leaning skeptics concerned about issues of poverty reduction, cynics concerned about the disjuncture between the cost and benefits of hosting the World Cup, and outright pessimists who focused on such negative issues as crime and xenophobia that threatened to spoil the big event. The discourses analysed here are from newspapers such as the Mail & Guardian, opinion pieces and commentaries published by Pambazuka News, and websites and political speeches that reveal the official view of the significance of the 2010 World Cup. The article performs three tasks: it frames and contextualises these discourses theoretically and historically to reflect on the idea of South Africa, it explains how nationalists and pan-Africanists understood the significance of the World Cup, and finally it looks at the way pan-Africanist and nationalist discourses were criticised by left-leaning thinkers.

The structure of the article is as follows. Section 2 outlines the theoretical framework informing the readings of the various meanings and perspectives on the World Cup, Section 3 introduces the idea of South Africa and explains how a mere geographical expression was reconstructed into a national identity of a people, Section 4 deals with the politics of blending nationalism and pan-Africanism, Section 5 explores some of the critiques of the World Cup mainly informed by left-leaning thinking on the economic and ideological impact of the event, and Section 6 concludes.

2. Theoretical framework

The concept of ‘banal nationalism’ and the Essex discourse-theoretical approach are used here to examine the symbolic and substantive meaning of the World Cup. The Essex discourse-theoretical approach (otherwise known as the ‘Essex School’ of ideology and discourse analysis) originated from the work of two theoreticians Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985). This approach to sociopolitical phenomena is premised on post-structuralist methods and insights. Its focus is on understanding the impact of ideological and symbolic processes on the formation of political discourses, identities and communities. Its core terms and concepts include discourse as a substitute for the traditional concept of structure. It emphasises the role of discursive context in meaning-making, in the process questioning the idea of an ultimate centre, origin or foundation on which structure is built. It uses hegemony as a substitute for the traditional concept of politics and emphasises the constructedness of identities and importance of symbols. Social antagonism is its substitute for the traditional concept of conflict and it takes into account the constitutive role of friend-foe divisions (Torfing, 1999:81–2).

In this study the World Cup is studied as signifier that forged a chain of significations with deep symbolic meanings that were used to consolidate the nation-building project and stimulate economic development. David Howarth and Yannis Stavrakakis state that ‘Discourse theory assumes that all objects and actions are meaningful, and that their meaning is conferred by historically specific systems of rules’ (2000:2). The World Cup is seen as one of those events that provoked various articulations of ideological elements, pitting optimistic nationalists and pan-Africanists concerned about patriotism and unity against Afro-pessimists, cynics and skeptics, who doubted even the ability of South Africa to host a successful tournament. Afro-pessimists emphasised such pathologies as crime, corruption and racial violence as potential spoilers of the mega-event, while left-leaning thinkers were concerned about material benefits and were persistently doubtful about the ‘trickle-down’ effect of the benefits of the mega-event for the poor.

The nationalists led by President Jacob Zuma worked tirelessly to deepen a common national spirit across races, ethnicities, genders and generations. The World Cup provided an opportune moment for the use of national symbols to routinise this spirit. Michael Billig (1995) notes how national symbols such as national football teams, flags and anthems form a crucial part of the everyday routines through which the nation is reproduced. Billig coined the term ‘banal nationalism’ to describe the kind of nationalism that takes the form of a daily spectacle and is ingrained in people's contemporary consciousness and manifested in daily life (1995:5–7). This ‘everyday nationalism’ was constantly flagged in the media, through routine symbols and habits of language. It was ingrained in the singing of the national anthem, wearing of T-shirts bearing national messages and hanging of flags on buildings as reminders that often operated subconsciously. Billig argues that: ‘Daily, the nation is indicated, or “flagged” in the lives of its citizenry’ (1995:6). The World Cup paved the way for the flagging of the nation and the constant reminding of everyone within the borders of the country that they were ‘part of a thing called “nation”’, as Billig puts it (1995:6).

The World Cup gave the political leadership of South Africa an opportunity to link the mega-event directly to the project of nation-building. Bafana Bafana immediately assumed the status of a national symbol and became a powerful signifier with a strong populist effect. A young nation working to become cohesive, South Africa took advantage of the patriotic spirit that was ignited by the World Cup to try to consolidate the nation-building project. This involved making nationalism the ‘daily life glue’ that united the people around particular symbols across racial, ethnic and generational divides. Vuvuzelas, Bafana Bafana T-shirts and the national flag were used as ever-present symbols of national political renewal. The concept of ‘banal nationalism’ is useful for capturing the realities of how nationhood became a daily spectacle and how it was brought to the surface of contemporary life. It is also useful for explaining how the everyday representations of the nation built a sense of national solidarity and belonging. But to gain a better understanding of the challenges of nation-building in South Africa we need to look at the history and development of the idea of South Africa as a phenomenon that deserves promotion and consolidation.

3. South Africanism as a national identity

The roots of South African identity can be traced to a combination of accidents of history such as shipwrecks on the Indian Ocean and political processes such as Anglicisation, Afrikanisation and Africanisation as identitarian projects (Mbembe, 2010a). South African national identity formation has always been contested and mediated by such processes as migration, conquest, imperialism, colonialism and nationalism. Saul Dubow argues that the early process of imagining South Africa became part of ‘a developing imperial and colonial dialogue’ (2007:53). But prior to the colonial encounters African nation-builders such as Shaka of the Zulu, Moshweshwe of the Sotho and others were already busy with the complex process of nation-building, incorporating people of different ethnic origins. The first people to use the term ‘South Africa’, however, were Western travellers. The Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, for example, wrote a two-volume travel book entitled ‘South Africa’ (1973 [1878]. As early as 1923, some writers were already debating whether South Africa was going to be a unique nation of various races and ethnicities. Olive Schreiner argued that:

There is a subtle but a very real bond, which unites all South Africans, and differentiates us from all other peoples in this world. This bond is our mixture of races itself. It is this which divides South Africans from all other peoples in the world, and makes us one. (Schreiner 1923, cited in Dubow, 2007:56)

But GG Calpin (1941) differed from Schreiner, arguing that ‘there are no South Africans’. He pointed to the existence of two flags and two languages (English and Afrikaners) as evidence of the lack of a national sentiment that could be called ‘South African’.

The earliest inhabitants of what is today South Africa were the San, the Khoi Khoi, the Nguni, the Sotho-Tswana and the Venda (Omer-Cooper, 1987:2). These people did not use the name ‘South Africa’ to refer to the places they occupied but used various local names. Dubow notes that:

It is well to remember that, before becoming a political entity in 1910, ‘South Africa’ was little more than a figurative expression. The term ‘South Africa’ was current from as early as the 1830s but until the beginning of the 20th century it referred principally to a region extending northwards from the Cape peninsula to the Zambezi. Only the constituent elements of the sub-continent – African territories and societies, British colonies, and Afrikaner republics – had any definite meaning and even then the make-up and boundaries of these states and societies were often vague. It was during the last quarter of the 19th century that the modern idea of South Africa began to acquire meaning and attract interest. (2007:53)

Leonard Thompson supports this view, saying that: ‘In 1870, South Africa was an imbroglio of peoples of disparate African, Asian and European origins and cultures’ (2000:109). Since the colonial encounter, issues of social identity, ethnicity, race, citizenship, nationality and nationhood have become key vectors in political contestations. Colin Bundy further amplifies the argument, noting that:

In the political catechism of the New South Africa, the primary enquiry remains the National Question. What is the post-apartheid nation? Who belongs or is excluded, and on what basis? How does a ‘national identity gain its salience and power to transcend the particularities of ethnicity and race?’ … How in short, is nation to be imagined, let alone realised? (2007:79)

At the centre of the idea of South Africa as a nation there are a number of complex issues to be negotiated and transcended: the existence of different races and various ethnicities, and questions of nativity and indigeneity. While the Freedom Charter of 1955 is celebrated for declaring that ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it,’ it failed to spell out how this noble dream was to be realised. Some Africanist political formations such as the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) claimed South Africa for Africans and rejected the African National Congress (ANC)'s claim of South Africa for all (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2008, 2009). The PAC went further to contend that black people were oppressed as a subject nation – the African nation (Karis & Gerhart, 1977:505–7). These Africanist ideas are still resonant even within the ANC. Former president Thabo Mbeki's vision of ‘African Renaissance’ was to a large extent informed by strong Africanist ideas (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2008:53–85, 2009:72–4).

While the inclusive ideology of multiracial democracy triumphed over other ways of imagining the South African nation in 1994, the nation-building project has remained fragile and incomplete. It is no wonder that the post-apartheid leadership of South Africa has continued to use mega-events to try to deepen reconciliation and consolidate nationhood. Nor is it surprising that the World Cup was seized as another opportunity to hitch the process of nation-building to a popular event that cut across racial and ethnic divisions, demonstrating beyond doubt that nation-building was an ever-continuing process.

Ivor Chipkin has recently posed the question as to what constitutes South Africanness and what makes South Africa a nation (2007). To him, the nationalist struggle spearheaded by the ANC and other political formations was the terrain within which South Africans, as a collectivity organised in pursuit of a political end, and the nation, as a political community pursuing freedom and democracy, emerged. But the vectors of race, ethnicity, gender, region and generation have continued to exist as threats to the rainbow nation that emerged in 1994. During the course of the World Cup President Zuma declared that: ‘South Africa has come alive and will never be the same again after this World Cup’ (2010a:4). This was a form of acknowledgement that the World Cup ignited some form of broad and deep national comradeship. The World Cup also took place in the midst of South Africa's drive to assert its leadership in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and on the African continent. This meant that South Africa had to work towards linking patriotism with pan-Africanism to gain the support of the continent.

4. Blending nationalism with pan-Africanism

South Africa's post-apartheid foreign policy was premised on the vision of ‘a better South Africa, a better Africa and a better world’ (Pahad, 2009:42–3). Promotion of pan-Africanism has been a core component of South African foreign policy since 1999. Pan-Africanism is an ideology that emphasises the unity of the continent and all people of African descent resident outside Africa. Whereas South African foreign policy under President Nelson Mandela was dominated by the promotion of human rights and democracy, under President Thabo Mbeki it became intertwined with the philosophy of ‘African Renaissance’, which emphasised the renewal and revival of Africa through economic development, promotion of peace and stability, and integration of the continent (Ndlovu, 2010:146). Mbeki's letter to FIFA motivating to host the World Cup was therefore imbued with the spirit of pan-Africanism and South Africanism and stressed the need to synergise the two. He wrote: ‘In the name of our continent, we wish to organise an event which will send waves of confidence from the Cape to Cairo’ (cited in Mogwe, 2010). The bidding initiative was permeated from start to finish by arguments about the need for Africa's revival and South Africa's desire to promote the African Renaissance. The slogan was: ‘It's Africa's turn!’ (Alegi, 2001; Cornelissen & Swart, 2006; Cornelissen, 2007, 2010; Bolsmann & Brewster, 2009). In concrete terms, South Africa's bidding and the actual preparations for the World Cup were strongly supported by the African Union (AU) and SADC, to the extent that the AU launched 2007 as the International Year of Africa's Football as part of its solidarity with South Africa (Ndlovu, 2010:149).

At the local level, Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu framed the World Cup as an opportunity for South Africa to display to the world its political journey from an ‘ugly caterpillar’ during the apartheid era to a ‘beautiful butterfly’ today (cited in Mogwe, 2010). President Zuma's address at the Africa Day Gala Dinner emphasised that the World Cup offered ‘us an opportunity to showcase our African culture, history and heritage’ (Zuma, 2010a:4–5). The AU chose ‘Building and maintaining peace through sport in Africa’ as its theme for the celebration of Africa Day in 2010, again in solidarity with South Africa. Zuma further stated that:

We need to find resonance between the ability of sport to unite a people and to establish the roots for peace and development. This international event, to which all of us can rightly claim ownership, should be used to deepen our understanding of our shared cultures and ensure that dialogue and cooperation among Africans is promoted. When Tata Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela lifted the Rugby World Cup trophy in 1995 and the African Cup of Nations trophy the following year our nation became one – confirming that we are a nation united in its diversity. (2010b:3–4)

During the tournament itself, South African nationalists tried to deepen and consolidate patriotism through symbolic means. This included declaring a day of blowing vuvuzelas and setting aside Fridays as ‘Football Friday’ where people were allowed to wear sports regalia even at workplaces. Bafana Bafana T-shirts became a form of national dress. The South African national flag became the dominant symbol of unity of purpose, with motorists of all races and ethnicities decking out their cars with this sign of national pride. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza wrote that:

For many Africans across the continent and in the Diaspora the World Cup represents football nationalism that transcends nationality; it invokes their pan-African quest to belong to the world and the world to them with full dignity as human beings. (2010:2–3)

Deliberate attempts were made to blend pan-Africanism with South African nationalism to produce a consolidated hallmark of the African World Cup. A variety of media were exploited to emphasise the ‘African-ness’ of the World Cup, for example the popular ‘waka waka’ song (‘this time for Africa’), the profile of the Cameroonian striker Samuel Eto'o in the official 2010 World Cup poster, and an African football-playing lion named Zakumi, designed as a mascot and a children's toy. An image of South Africa as a full part of Africa was emphasised not only to legitimise the country's drive for continental leadership but also to challenge the notion of South African exceptionalism rooted in its apartheid history. With the early exit of Bafana Bafana from the tournament, the Ghanaian national team, known as the ‘Black Stars of Africa’, became the African flag-bearer. Their name perfectly suited their continental task and identity. This was another indication of the efforts to blend South Africanism with Africanism. Not only were continental Africans mobilised as co-hosts with South Africa of the World Cup, but Mbeki also extended the call for unity to the Diaspora as stakeholders in the first ever African World Cup (Ndlovu, 2010:148; Van der Merwe, 2010).

On the local scene, some letters to the editor of the Mail & Guardian revealed how the moment of the World Cup was experienced at individual level, for example:

Our national pride has been elevated. We have progressed from a narrow, tunnel-vision nation to one that has become relatively colour-blind. South Africans have taken to wearing their ‘football Friday’ T-shirts with pride in support of the national team, and it worked magic for them. It felt like the Mandela age had returned. It was a refreshing change from being aware of my colour, the past and how I was viewed by fellow South Africans. It was replaced by a feeling of belonging and pride. (Mail & Guardian, 2010:34)

However, the optimism and national pride generated by the World Cup arose against a backdrop of racial tensions provoked by the murder of Eugene Terre'Blanche, leader of a fringe right-wing extremist Afrikaner group that was still steeped in apartheid ideologies, and the May 2008 xenophobic attacks that left 62 people dead, raising doubts about South Africans' commitment to pan-African ideals (Neocosmos, 2006; Desai & Vahed, 2010). ANC Youth League President Julius Malema's penchant for singing the provocative liberation song ‘dubil’ ibhunu' (‘shoot the Boer’) added to the tension.

What is clear is that the World Cup spawned a variety of interpretations, but the nationalist and pan-Africanist ones were dominant. For instance, for the public intellectual Xolela Mangcu the World Cup was ‘about black people saying to white people, “we inherited this country, and now it's better than before”’ (cited in the Observer Sports Monthly, 2007). It was also about testing South Africa's maturity as a young nation. It was a test of Africa's abilities, a confirmation of positive aspects of African-ness, and a refutation of African divisibility (Czegley, 2009). It was partly a summit to showcase African and South African organisational abilities and partly a political statement that said the past of mediocrity and failure was now foreign to Africa as the continent claimed a dignified space in the world of the 21st century.

This was well articulated by South Africa's Minister of Sports Makhenkesi Stofile, who said: ‘The 2010 World Cup is Africa's time. The entire continent must work together to consolidate the African solidarity around this project – the African showpiece’ (2010:6). Mbeki, the leading proponent of the African Renaissance idea, said: ‘This is not a dream. It is a practical policy … the successful hosting of the FIFA World Cup in Africa will provide a powerful, irresistible momentum to the African Renaissance’ (2010:4). However, some foreign media, especially Western ones and British tabloids, continued to emphasise the issue of crime and went so far as to warn people that a racial war in South Africa would be generated by the death of Terre'Blanche (Berger, 2007:1–6). South African authorities were constantly under pressure to rebut peddlers of insecurity and assure the world that visitors' safety was guaranteed.

Mphutlane wa Bofelo argues that the World Cup also contributed to the building of the global village. This could be seen in ‘the converging of a myriad flags, national anthems, songs and faces in one space and the adoption and utilisation of one instrument – the vuvuzela – by the international football community at the World Cup’ (Bofelo, 2010). Further, he concludes that:

The World Cup made it a bit easier for people who are often afraid to launch out of ethnocentric and narrowly constructed perceptions of being and belonging to perceive and dream of a sense of ‘nationhood’, ‘world community’, ‘national unity’, ‘continental unity’, and ‘international fellowship of humanity’ that transcends and demolishes the arbitrary walls and borders and barricades constructed around race, ethnicity, class, gender, religion and geopolitics. (2010:5–6)

South African television's World Cup advertisements clearly manifested what Billig terms ‘banal nationalism’, the evidence of nationalism in everyday things. Almost all displayed and articulated a national identity theme: ‘Fly the flag, our most powerful symbol of unity and pride’, ‘Diski dance: learn the moves, feel the rhythm of African football’, ‘Africa's time has come’, and so on.

But nationalists' and optimists' discourses were countered by those of a coterie of dissenters – pessimists, leftists and others – who were sceptical about the benefits the World Cup would bring to South Africa. They were joined by members of such social movements as the Anti-Eviction Campaign and Abahlali baseMjondolo (‘shack dwellers’, Zulu). The following section analyses the dissenting voices and main critiques of the World Cup.

5. Critiques of official discourses of the World Cup

There is a long-standing debate among leftists and liberals about the role of sport in society, and this is useful for understanding contemporary critiques of the official views of the World Cup. William J Morgan (1983, 1994) is one of the well-known scholars to develop a critical theory of sport. But the debate began with classical thinkers like Theodor Adorno (1973) and Max Horkheimer (1972). The key questions were: whether sport was an essential instrument of the social order used to promote economic and political agendas of the various nation-states, whether it was part of ideologies of domination and capitalist hegemony reflecting the prevailing economic order, whether it was part of opium of the mind that served to divert people from core issues affecting their lives, or whether it was part of culture and enjoyed autonomy from the prevailing economic order (Morgan, 1983:24–7). A further question was whether sport had any redemptive and emancipatory value or was just part of bourgeois social life. It is within this broader context that the critiques of the World Cup must be understood.

For South Africa, negative opinions began to be voiced soon after South Africa's football elite spearheaded the bid to host the World Cup on African soil. Pessimists began to question whether South Africa would be able to pull this off and be ready in time to host the tournament. They kept making their point about pervasive crime in South Africa as a major problem that might embarrass the nation instead of enhancing its image. When it became clear that South Africa had successfully hosted the tournament, some critics began to talk about renewed threats of xenophobia. The press, which often carries pessimistic messages, was awash with stories to the effect that South Africans were going to attack foreigners once the last whistle marking the end of the World Cup was blown on 11 July 2010. New xenophobic attacks were poised to derail the pan-Africanism and nationalism that had been cultivated and galvanised by the World Cup.

The threat and actual acts of xenophobia became an indictment of South Africa's pan-African pretences. Desai and Vahed argued that xenophobic attacks and ‘the government's tardy response exposed a rabid inward-looking nationalism’. Given the xenophobic sentiments and attacks, they asked whether the World Cup marked ‘Africa's turn or the turn on Africa’ at the end of the tournament. The attacks also revealed the limits of the appeal of the philosophy of African Renaissance within South Africa and repudiated the idea of ubuntu that was meant to make the world Cup ‘a celebration of Africa's humanity’ (2010:156, 161).

But even some members of the ruling ANC doubted the durability of the positive nationalism and patriotism generated by the World Cup. Zola Maseko, a member of the ANC and an independent filmmaker, reflected on what he termed ‘our limp attempt at nationhood’ that was inspired by the occasion of South Africa hosting the World Cup. He said:

Destiny placed South Africans in a situation never before experienced in the history of humanity. We are an experiment. Humanity looks upon us to resolve one of the most brutal and oppressive ideas of our species: racism. Now that's something worth waving a flag for! Hell, you can even blow the vuvuzela if you so desire. (Maseko 2010:8)

Maseko became very critical of the purported unity of South Africa engendered by the World Cup. He argued that: ‘A lot of whites have two flags on their cars, a South African flag and a European one – their head sensibly in Africa, where they enjoy a first-world lifestyle at cut-rate third-world prices, and their hearts in the land of their ancestors: Greece, Spain, England, Portugal, France, Germany and the like’ ignoring the fact there were indeed Afrikaners who supported Bafana Bafana and Black Stars of Ghana (Maseko, 2010:8).

According to Maseko, the hosting of the World Cup ‘peddled the mischievous lie that centuries of racial hatred, economic exploitation and racial discrimination had been miraculously wiped away, in one fell swoop’ (2010:23). For him, the moment of the World Cup was only ‘one month of delirious flag-waving and patriotism (kiss the Boer) before returning to our neatly separate and unequal lives. One month of fake nationhood; one month of nauseating “unity”’ (Maseko 2010:23). Maseko's concerns were further echoed by Moeletsi Mbeki and Johann Rossouw, who wrote that South Africa was at a ‘crossroads’, and posed the question: ‘Will it seize this occasion to emerge at last from more than a century of divisive nationalisms?’ (2010:4–5).

Some dissenters and sceptics were quick to doubt whether a one-off event like the World Cup could really wave a magic wand and spontaneously heal the divisions and tensions of the past and the present. Bofelo noted that: ‘Transformation and transfiguration of attitudes of social stratification and various forms of discrimination that have been entrenched for centuries cannot happen in a minute like a cup of cappuccino or bowl of instant soup’ (2010:7–6). And John Mogwe was not impressed by nationalist notions of the power of ‘football nationalism’ in uniting the nation. He said:

Against the drone of infantile ‘positivism,’ butterflies and patronising comments on South Africa's continental grand mission to sort out the place from Cape to Cairo, there is, for example, the lone voice of Hugh Masekela who says, ‘After 350 years of history, I don't think the World Cup can change the lives of South Africans too much’. (Mogwe 2010:8)

Richard Calland remarked that:

At its best, sport can offer both vivid inspiration and all-consuming escapism. Thus the World Cup may serve to remind South Africans of how much has been achieved since the days of sporting boycotts and the crisis of the 1980s and, in so doing, engender a new sense of national purpose and pride. Or it may merely mask the cracks for a short time, obscuring the real fault lines and encouraging those who wish to loot the state to do so, with a dangerous sense of impunity. (Cited in Nani-Kofi, 2010:9)

But such a critique ignores the fact that the successful hosting of the World Cup helped to dispel some Afro-pessimistic ideologies about the incapability of Africa states: South Africa did prove a point about the capacity of African states to implement planned projects.

Achille Mbembe criticised the World Cup from a cultural point of view (2010b). He argued that the World Cup would be memorable only if it had been used as an opportunity to facilitate urban renaissance via de-racialisation of street names and promotion of cultures of conviviality. He claimed that there had been no creativity and cultural imagination involving communities but rather that the World Cup had been instrumentalised to serve elite corporate interests. Eventually it was ‘neither African, nor memorable’ and became ‘the first major transnational financial scam of the 21st century’ (Mbembe 2010b:5). Mbembe emphasised the fact that ‘Our victory can only be a cultural and moral victory’, revealing the changing terms of the continent's recognition in the world as well as displaying South Africa's cultural ‘exuberance – a historic moment in the chronology of our life as a nation, the first modern Afropolitan nation, a universal nation’ (2010b:6).

A growing body of critical literature is emerging on the essence of mega-events as spectacular, transient and one-off occasions organised to create a specific ambience underpinned by a variety of rituals, without much benefit to ordinary citizens (Ritchie, 2000; Newton, 2009). For South Africa, Dale McKinley, a social movement activist, questioned the possibility of trickle-down economic benefits of the World Cup changing the lives of the poor (McKinley, 2010a). He raised the issue of massive stadiums and world class infrastructure rising up adjacent to areas where poor people had no proper sanitation, houses, schools or recreational facilities as an ironic counterpoint to the whole excitement about the mega-event. He went on to state that:

Offering an unapologetic public critique of the FIFA Soccer World Cup at the height of the collective frenzy of positive expectation, feel-good nationalism and general excitement that now exists in our country is a risky thing to do. But it is a risk that needs to be taken precisely because, no matter what the context, myths always need to be separated from realities. (McKinley 2010b:7)

McKinley believes that the economic benefits of the World Cup have accrued to a ‘an elite grouping of private entities’, including the local organising committee. He challenges the idea of a ‘trickle-down’ of benefits to ordinary South Africans, noting that the process of cleaning up urban areas ‘has mainly targeted the homeless and poor, something which is in direct contradiction to the promise of more inclusive urban planning, housing provision and living space’ (McKinley, 2010a:5). But this type of critique that tries to disentangle the mythical and symbolic from the real and material misses the point that the symbolic is as important as the substantive if the World Cup is read from the post-structuralist perspective outlined at the beginning of this article. For example, patriotism cannot be reduced to the material and the real, but is important for national cohesion.

However, leftists have continued to portray sport as the opium that serves to divert the people's attention from the daily reality of poverty. It was within this context that social movements like the Anti-Eviction Campaign and Abahlali baseMjondolo (2010) read the World Cup through the lens of poverty reduction, to the extent of calling for ‘The Poor People's World Cup’ as a separate event catering for the needs and demands of the poor. The Anti-Eviction Campaign wanted a World Cup that would be ‘accessible for everyone’ and would enable poor communities to sell their products to visitors freely. Campaigns like these were not given publicity by the media and it appears that government authorities did not even listen to their grievances.

6. Conclusion

This article has dealt with the discourses that circulated around the meaning and significance of the World Cup for South Africa and the African continent. The exuberant pan-Africanist and nationalist sentiments were diluted by intensified xenophobia in South Africa. Perhaps the uneasy co-existence of xenophobia with pan-Africanism indicated that mega-events have the potential to fuel negative nationalism and positive patriotism simultaneously (Kersting, 2007:297). The threats and realities of outbreaks of xenophobia at the end of the widely praised and celebrated World Cup served as an indictment of the spirit of pan-Africanism ignited by the tournament. To some extent such threats helped to rehabilitate shattered Afro-pessimist prognoses of a one-month moment of fake nationhood.

This article has also provided a historical and theoretical context within which the issue of nationhood becomes central, while at the same time engaging with some major criticism of official discourses of the World Cup. For instance, the left-oriented critiques tended to hark back to the primacy of economy, as though the cultural, emotional, sentimental and ideational issues were not important. Deployment of the Essex discourse theoretical approach enabled full engagement with the symbolic aspects of the World Cup and their significance as it emphasised the need to transcend the traditional structuralist approaches to social and political phenomena. Despite the criticism, it cannot be denied that the World Cup had some important symbolic significance for a country emerging from years of isolation, as well as bringing material and developmental benefits that are of importance to any developing nation.