I have very mixed feelings about this so-called "Football Fever". We live in a country where Life itself is not respected. People are killed for cell phones - or even for the possibility that they might have something worth taking. We have the highest incident of child rape in the world. Poverty is rampant and employment is a privilege. The nation won't rally around that - but they'll rally around a football!
There are those who say that sport is a vehicle for "reconciliation". (I'm not sure what, precisely, they mean by that - should we be reconciled to poverty, corruption, rape and murder?). Perhaps they mean "rehabilitation"....?
My problem is this: Is this country so desensitized to the child abuse, the gangsterism, the drug paradise and the indiscriminate killings, that the only thing they are willing to rally around is a sport? Are we a nation of delinquents? Is the only common ground self-gratification?
Hosting the Soccer World Cup is not enough to make me "Proudly South African". It's just another diversion from issues that are - and should be - extremely disconcerting.
I won't be flying any flags. Frankly, I hope that the most skilled team wins. It's a pleasant event and I hope that the whole world enjoys it; but it does nothing for my own sense of nationalism or national pride. It'll take a renewed concern for human life to do that.
