South Africa: Democracy is our security for the World Cup (editorial)

January 13th, 2010

 

 

Johannesburg (South Africa) — There is little need to take seriously the warnings in some European newspapers that the attack on the national football team of Togo in the Angolan enclave of Cabinda last week may be an accurate measure of the risks involved in holding the Soccer World Cup in SA later this year.

Such warnings are born out of ignorance and, frankly, in cases like this, racism. Africa seldom gets a good press.

As shocking as the Cabinda attack was, it is important to understand that Angola and SA are very different.

Visitors to the World Cup will find this out for themselves. Angola is not even nearly a democracy. There is no freedom of speech there and it is run by a deeply corrupt elite.

SA is a real democracy and there is a great deal of free speech here. And it is run by a political elite, only some of whom are corrupt. That would also apply to many industrialised democracies.

That fact is, SA is a good bet because it is a real democracy. It is the best guarantee we, as citizens, and our visitors, have that a group of armed bandits isn't going to leap out of the bush at the side of the road and spray us with machine-gun fire. It isn't watertight though. Ask the Americans and the British.

But we are a free country. Visitors to the World Cup are going to be embraced, not body- searched, when they land here.

At least not at the airport! That's because while we don't have a terrorism problem here, we do have a host of others, including murderous crime, grinding poverty, dreadful hospitals and very bad schools.

This is where it'll be interesting for visitors. Our political elite is, by and large, probably a lot like theirs -- self- important, indolent and greedy. But unlike more sophisticated economies, our problems are still raw. Visitors will be able to measure much more accurately here what their own societies might have looked like before they acquired their particular veneer of sophistication.

Corruption is one example. President Jacob Zuma wriggled out of being tried for corruption last year on a technicality and political clout.

The guy who did go to jail on much the same charges Zuma faced was released from prison on compassionate grounds soon after Zuma became president. In order to get his co-conspirator, Schabir Shaik, off with a pardon, however, Zuma has had to cast around for other criminals to pardon at the same time, in order to look leaderly and magnanimous -- one appears to be an apartheid police mass murderer and there is a group of Inkatha prisoners, jailed for murder and other acts of violence, who might cop the presidential pardon too. All in order to free the president's friend. Visitors will recognise political patronage.

The decline in education standards will be a familiar story too. Here only about a third of pupils of matriculation age actually passed their exams last year. Every year our intellectual ability to keep a serious economy growing on our own diminishes. We are running out of smart people.

But the obvious problem here that will concern visitors is crime, which is often inexplicably violent. We doubt, though, that the World Cup will fire up a surge in crime. If anything, the opposite will occur. And the fact is that day- to-day life in SA is humdrum. Walk through the centres of our biggest cities; only if you are extremely unlucky would you be accosted.

If you look for trouble, as would apply almost anywhere, you'll find it. And this is the challenge the authorities here face. They need to make it almost impossible for a visitor to harm themselves.

We tend to think here that because a plan is in place, it must be working. Yet only constant and actual vigilance by professional and intelligent security personnel can guarantee the totally safe World Cup we all want.

Our government must be able to put its hand on its heart and swear that there are no incompetents involved in ensuring that we avoid anything even remotely what the Togo team has been put through in Angola.

'The SA authorities must be able to swear, hands on hearts, there are no incompetents running World Cup security'.

 

source.Business Day (South Africa) - January 11, 2010.