John Battersby: South Africa's Great Leap Forward
[John Battersby is a former southern Africa correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor and a former editor of the Sunday Independent in Johannesburg. He is co-author of “Nelson Mandela: A Life in Photographs.” He is a trustee of the Aaron Mokoena Foundation, which supports young soccer players.]
In recent months, South Africans of all races have been donning their country’s national team shirts on Fridays, flying the national flag from their car windows, wrapping their rear-view mirrors in socks sporting the national flag, and chanting slogans about how Africa’s time has come – “It’s here. Can you feel it?” There is a rare inclusive outpouring of patriotic fervor....
Now that the Cup is well under way, South Africans are undergoing a seismic shift in terms of social cohesion and identity.
Just months before the World Cup began, there was a protracted and heated public debate that threatened to open Pandora’s box. In March, Julius Sello Malema, a South African politician and the president of the African National Congress Youth League, was found by a South African regional high court to be singing and advocating the singing of a song that was held “unconstitutional and unlawful” and amounted to hate speech....
But that is generally the exception to the rule. After decades of apartheid, South Africa has for the most part become a model of racial reconciliation, with a burgeoning black middle class. And there is a healthy ongoing debate about whether the large numbers of poor and unemployed South Africans will benefit from the expenditure of some $5 billion on stadiums and related infrastructure.
But the most enduring benefactor of the World Cup will be the national psyche and the quest for a common national identity to transcend a deeply divided past.
As former President Thabo Mbeki said when he spoke at the handing over ceremony in Berlin in 2006, the German World Cup succeeded in restoring some of Germany’s self-respect after its legacy of National Socialism....
Read entire article at CS Monitor
In recent months, South Africans of all races have been donning their country’s national team shirts on Fridays, flying the national flag from their car windows, wrapping their rear-view mirrors in socks sporting the national flag, and chanting slogans about how Africa’s time has come – “It’s here. Can you feel it?” There is a rare inclusive outpouring of patriotic fervor....
Now that the Cup is well under way, South Africans are undergoing a seismic shift in terms of social cohesion and identity.
Just months before the World Cup began, there was a protracted and heated public debate that threatened to open Pandora’s box. In March, Julius Sello Malema, a South African politician and the president of the African National Congress Youth League, was found by a South African regional high court to be singing and advocating the singing of a song that was held “unconstitutional and unlawful” and amounted to hate speech....
But that is generally the exception to the rule. After decades of apartheid, South Africa has for the most part become a model of racial reconciliation, with a burgeoning black middle class. And there is a healthy ongoing debate about whether the large numbers of poor and unemployed South Africans will benefit from the expenditure of some $5 billion on stadiums and related infrastructure.
But the most enduring benefactor of the World Cup will be the national psyche and the quest for a common national identity to transcend a deeply divided past.
As former President Thabo Mbeki said when he spoke at the handing over ceremony in Berlin in 2006, the German World Cup succeeded in restoring some of Germany’s self-respect after its legacy of National Socialism....