After the party, a mixed legacy
FOUR years after the World Cup, FNB Stadium stands out on the drab skyline of southern Johannesburg, a multicoloured mosaic of steel and glass set against the yellow-dust mine dumps.
On many weekends, the 94 000-seat venue that hosted key games during the 2010 tournament is pumping either with the roars of soccer fans or chants of concert-goers, an example of enduring, direct returns accrued by host nation South Africa.
The stadium, which underwent a R1.5-billion upgrade for the event, comfortably pays its own way, according to its website, with fixtures ranging from Soweto soccer derbies to concerts by the likes of Lady Gaga and U2. In December, it hosted a mass memorial for Nelson Mandela and, last month, was the venue for a massive ANC election rally.
But FNB Stadium stands out in another, crucial way.
Of the nine other venues built or renovated for the World Cup to the tune of more than R10-billion — a quarter of the overall budget — all are in the red, unable to attract regular top sporting clashes or international rock stars.
The bill for their upkeep falls on cash-strapped municipalities, a salutary lesson for Brazil, where hundreds of thousands have protested, sometimes violently, against state spending on this year’s tournament, which starts on Thursday.
Brazil’s anti-World Cup movement argues that the $11.7-billion (R125-billion) earmarked for Cuprelated spending — three times South Africa’s budget, even though only $7- billion has actually been disbursed — would have been better used on hospitals, schools and public transport.
Many in South Africa, a middleincome country, feel the same way.
“If 50% of the collective resources deployed around the World Cup were deployed around these critical issues, I think the country would have made a big, big leap forward,” said Achille Mbembe, a social scientist at the University of the Witwatersrand.
The Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth supports the case. The current tenants of the state-of-the-art 47 000-seat, R2.1-billion venue are the Southern Kings, a secondtier rugby side excluded last year from the lucrative Super Rugby competition that includes teams from Australia and New Zealand.
The Port Elizabeth region has also not had a team in the Premier Soccer League since 2006, and even if a local side clawed its way into the big time, the turnstiles will not be overworked — the average PSL game attracts crowds of just 7 000.
Since it opened its doors, the stadium has attracted only 125 000 visitors every year. Its owners decline to reveal the annual upkeep costs, which may be as high as R65million, according to two university studies, but they concede that it runs at a loss of R13-million a year — a bill the municipality picks up.
With so many other social demands in one of South Africa’s poorest regions, turning it around is a low priority.
“Sports development competes for resources with other service delivery priorities, like sanitation, electricity, economic development and waste management,” said council spokesman Mthubanzi Mniki.
In their final report on the 2010 tournament, Fifa and the South African Football Association urged people to focus on “non-tangible” benefits such as an improved national team and the rebranding of a country plagued by violent crime.
Whereas tourism numbers have boomed since the tournament, a reflection of both South Africa’s burnished international image and — in the past 18 months — its weak currency, the sporting benefits are debatable.
Bafana Bafana failed to qualify for the 2014 World Cup and are languishing at 65 in the world rankings, having slid from a short-lived postWorld Cup high of 38th in 2011.
South Africa’s post-World Cup development plan is nothing if not ambitious — propelling Bafana Bafana into the world top 20 by 2020.
There are signs that the R450-million paid by Fifa in 2012 to the World Cup Legacy Trust — the post-tournament soccer development fund — is kicking into gear.
A national database that goes live next month will track all of South Africa’s two million registered soccer players and Safa has established countrywide under-13 and under-15 leagues for boys and girls. It also plans to train 10 000 coaches a year. —