The President    
Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA)
FIFA-Strasse 20
PO Box 8044
Zurich
Switzerland

FIFA’s MORAL BANKRUPTCY

Whilst football fever is running high in South Africa and the rest of the world as the first matches of the 2010 Soccer World Cup are being played, there is a big dark cloud forming on the horizon for the host nation of this magnificent and spectacular event.

With its notorious crime and already well-known racially prejudiced policies of Affirmative Action and Black Economic Empowerment, the ANC’s New South Africa is starting to loose its varnish as more and more people are starting to notice the true colours of South Africa’s Rainbow, that is, except for organised sport of course.

You see, Mr Blatter, whilst FIFA secretary general Jeromy Valcke was happy to declare that FIFA has managed (through the use of its draconian regulations, bylaws and brand police) to increase its income by 50 percent since the 2006 World Cup in Germany, reports of South Africa’s overspending in order to host the event, as well as rumours of planned xenophobic attacks and Zimbabwe-style land grabs immediately after the World Cup, have started doing the rounds in South Africa’s press.

The exit of Bafana Bafana from the World Cup, following its defeat by Uruguay and it failure to defeat France by three goals, provides observers with an opportunity to assess the costs and benefits to South Africa of the privilege of hosting the world's biggest sporting event.

President Jacob Zuma is buoyant: he predicts that the World Cup will serve as a catalyst to economic growth, thereby generating new employment opportunities and reducing the high unemployment rate of between 25 percent and 35 percent of the working age population, depending on whether the strict or the  expanded definition of unemployment is used.

Zuma notes further that the construction of new stadiums for the soccer tournament resulted in the employment of an additional 66 000 workers and the injection into the economy of nearly R8-billion, with R2.2-billion of that flowing into low-income households.

While the completion of projects to build the required extra stadiums will almost certainly lead to the retrenchment of most, if not all, of the 66 000 workers, Zuma emphasises that the 40 000 police officers who were recruited to strengthen the police service during the World Cup will be retained and integrated into the police service permanently, to the benefit of all South Africans.

The new FIFA government that took over the reigns in South Africa has many advantages. To think that three robbers were arrested and sentenced within two days! Two of them are Zimbabweans and will spend the next 15 years in prison.

The special courts created for the World Cup Soccer tournament deliver instant justice. We wonder if the extra costs associated with the special courts, such as overtime, were calculated in the billions the tournament is costing the country. Meanwhile, the police chief spoke sternly about foreign criminals who abuse the tournament. He said they exploit South Africa's high crime levels. Truth is stranger than fiction ...

Chat groups on the Internet and letters to newspapers show that many Afrikaans-speaking citizens are not duly concerned about the foreign journalists targeted by criminals. Some say it is time the world take notice of what is going on in the country. Actually the world knows what is going on because only half of the estimated foreign visitors turned up for the tournament.

The big problem facing us, is that when they return to their home countries there will be no more special task teams and special courts to deliver instant justice.

The chief of police should heed the lessons he is learning now. The first lesson is keep the illegal immigrants on the other side of the border. The second lesson is arresting the criminals and keeping them behind bars.

Unfortunately the minute FIFA leaves, the poor implementation of law and order is back and the struggle for survival begins once more.

South Africa is in the midst of hosting one of the biggest sporting events in the world, and it is set to cost the country money that could have been spent on other projects. Will the long-term cost of hosting the Football World Cup be worth it, or should the country have rather spent the money on tackling the many social and economic ills facing the country?

Much has been said about the cost of the Football World Cup to South Africa and how the money could have been spent on more pressing problems facing the country. This is all true. It must be questioned whether Cape Town and Durban needed to spend billions of rands on building new stadiums, when they had stadiums such as Newlands and Absa Stadium which would have been perfectly suited to hosting World Cup football. The construction of new stadiums in smaller cities such as Polokwane and Nelspruit also raised the country’s eyebrow. These two stadiums are likely to become white elephants after the World Cup in what are two of the country’s poorest provinces.

The number of tourists expected to come to South Africa and the boost to GDP that they would have provided has also been overstated. The global economic downturn has helped reduce the number of football fans who have come to this country. For example, Grant Thornton, a tax advisory and audit firm, originally estimated that 483 000 people would come to South Africa for the World Cup. It subsequently revised this down to 373 000. Many other foreigners who would have come to South Africa in this period are likely to have stayed away, turned off by overinflated prices and the hordes of soccer fans descending on the country.