Exactly a month from today the first game of the 19th Football World Cup Finals will kick off between Mexico and hosts South Africa in Johannesburg.
Even if you are not a big fan of soccer, and I know this probably includes a lot of the American readership of The Daily, there are too many reasons why you should tune in and watch, why you should care.
Forget the Olympics – this is the greatest international sporting event on the calendar. Billions will be glued to their TVs across the globe, patriotism will ride high and heroes and villains will emerge. Historical rivalries and wars will be refought right there on the pitches of South Africa.
But more so, this will be the first ever World Cup played in Africa. The first time a sporting tournament of this magnitude has ever been held in the world’s second-largest and second-most populous continent.
It is hard to exaggerate what this means. Africa was the cradle of humanity, a place to where we all, whatever color or creed we belong to, can trace our roots. It is a land of fantastic diversity in flora, fauna, geology and culture. But our birthplace has become a land of strife and suffering. Nowadays it is better known for war and famine than the successes of our species: science, art, industry and democracy.
Just a few short years ago, it would have been almost unthinkable that any of the continent’s myriad of countries could host a tournament on the scale of the World Cup or the Olympics. South Africa itself was a global pariah, its discriminatory system of apartheid an unpalatable and racist concept out of line with the world most of us lived in or aspired to live in.
But when change finally came, the country refused to go the way of so many failed attempts at democracy in Africa. There was no civil war, and while truth commissions brought past abuses to light, they offered forgiveness rather than retribution. F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela etched their names in the history books, and both became that most rare of African political leaders: those who step down gracefully, leaving their countrymen to decide their own futures through fair elections.
This is not to say South Africa, or the continent as a whole, is now without its problems. Diseases such as AIDS are endemic, natural disasters abound and war, political oppression and corruption are crippling many of its nations.
When neighboring Angola hosted the Africa Cup of Nations at the beginning of the year, a horrific attack by gunmen on a bus carrying Manchester City star Emmanuel Adebayor and the rest of the Togolese team left three dead, bringing the reality and difficulty of life on the continent to international attention and raising serious security fears ahead of the World Cup.
While the West and the East have industrialized and modernized, Africa has been left behind, and no amount of humanitarian aid can redress this balance. Colonialism took its toll historically, but more recently trade restrictions, protectionism and the unbridled power of multinationals have served to stymie growth and exclude Africa from the global economy. Even as FIFA brings the World Cup to the continent, there are claims that small local businesses are being excluded from sharing in the potential success from the tournament for the sake of the large, and foreign, official sponsors.
But through all of this there is hope, and that is what this World Cup represents.
Looking purely through the eyes of a soccer fan, the progress over the last few years is obvious. Some of the very best players at the biggest clubs in the world are now African while yet more have strong ties to the continent through parents and family. A total of 45 African players took part in the English Premiership this season, enough for two full squads.
Egypt, Cameroon and Nigeria are ranked in the top 20 by FIFA, and Cameroon won the Olympic tournament in 2000. Last year, star Cameroonian striker Samuel Eto’o moved to Inter Milan from Barcelona with a pricetag of 46 million euros (59 million dollars), and just last weekend, Didier Drogba from the Ivory Coast sealed Chelsea’s Premier League title with a hat trick.
Not only has soccer become a way out of a life of poverty for those talented, and lucky, enough to make the leap from street to stadium, but these players are acutely aware of where they have come from.
Many, including Eto’o and Drogba, have set up organizations to provide better healthcare and education in their homelands. Nigerian UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Nwankwo Kanu set up a foundation to help African children born with heart defects, and fellow Goodwill Ambassador and 1995 FIFA Player of the Year George Weah has promoted soccer as a way to help heal his war-torn home of Liberia, even running for president in 2005.
Sport cannot be the answer to all of Africa’s problems, but it can offer something elusive that all the money and aid in the world cannot – a way to forget its troubles, at least for a short time, and celebrate its many good sides in front of a global audience, and perhaps the dream of a better future for its children.
And that is why, come June 11, you should tune in. Not just to watch the World Cup, but to watch Africa’s World Cup.
Tom Taylor plans on watching every game of the World Cup. Find out what team he’s rooting for (hint: it’s England) at [email protected].