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.
1 comment:
I, myself, don't follow any particular sport, but I will admit that I enjoy the "spirit" of a sport in that it does tend to draw people together, at least temporarily. Like you said, it's just too bad that sort of "spirit" can't be applied to other aspects of life that, well...actually matter.
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