Word: worldly
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...Nelson Mandela will pass the gold-plated World Cup trophy to the new soccer world champion at Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, as a billion sets of eyes and ears from every corner of the globe are glued to television screens and radios. The international sports media will call it the final day of a tournament that represents South Africa’s modernism and rapid, inspirational distancing from its torrential past of racial and economic inequalities. They will only be half right...
...government has continually promised the residents of these camps real homes away from the cities, yet there are no homes. In all 10 cities hosting world cup games, these forced evictions to nowhere have affected tens of thousands of people. This brutal policy of cleaning up for the World Cup by removing citizens from their homes with the empty promise of alternative housing is an overt human rights violation that should no longer be ignored by the world...
Unfortunately, the World Cup evictions are a pittance in comparison to the roughly 500,000 people that have been evicted from their homes in the service of national development projects, since the advent of truly representative democracy in 1994. South Africa’s constitution defines housing as a human right, but as much as a quarter of South Africa’s population live in “shack dwellings” where large families live in cramped squalor underneath thin scrap metal with intermittent access to clean water and power. To make matters worse, the Slums Act, passed...
Opponents argue, with some success, that the efforts surrounding the World Cup will have long-term benefits for the poor. The tournament will create an estimated 415,000 jobs, and although there have been complaints, and even strikes, over low wages, it is undeniable that those jobs hold immeasurable value in a nation with unemployment hovering around 25 percent Although South Africa will experience short-term losses from the World Cup, it is not unreasonable to predict that the renovated airports, roads, and hotels will be a catalyst for growth into the future. Furthermore, the nearly $200 million spent...
Nevertheless, it’s uncertain how much of the World Cup’s revenue will trickle down to the very poor. South Africa already has large economic inequalities that have only widened in the last decade. There are indications that the World Cup will only serve to deepen those inequalities. For instance, informal traders and street vendors, who are significant sources of wealth for the South African poor, are being restricted from trading in many cities’ commercial areas during the World Cup. All in all, the World Cup will constitute a contribution of less than...