This morning Australia played their first game of the World Cup and lost 4-0 to Germany.
As the World Cup has been approaching, though, I have been considering the appropriateness of South Africa hosting such an event. They have spent over $2 billion in preparation for one month's worth of football. That is a lot of money. It is estimated that by the time it is all over and accounted for the cost could be over $5 billion.
My problem is that in South Africa the wealth disparity is huge. Several million of the population have no access to running water or electricity. Over 50% of the country's population lives below the poverty line. Aids runs rampant throughout the nation, as it does the continent, and the unemployment rate is over 25%.
How could we possibly think that it is appropriate for the world to converge on a nation to play soccer at world class facilities when, just a few kilometres from every stadium there are people living in desperate poverty. They have no running water, no electricity and no sanitation.
I am concerned that as I watch and enjoy the World Cup games I am condoning what I think is a gross misallocation of resources. $5 billion is enough to provide running water, electricity and sanitation to many people in South Africa who don't currently have it. But instead it's being spent on one month's worth of sport.
The usual line is being pushed that this will increase tourism and spending and that the costs will be recovered in only a short time. Experience tells us, however, that this is not true. Even in Sydney ticket sales to the arious stadiums in Olympic Park have not covered their costs. Why would it be in any way different here. In Greece their economic downfall is in part being blamed on the incredible amount of money that went in to the Athens Olympics in 2004, which has not been recovered.
I think that as Christians we need to be very careful about what we support. I do not support the 2010 World Cup and if that means not seeing Australia play any more games then I can live with that.
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Well your resolve shouldn't be too difficult to stick to anyway. After yesterday's performance I don't think we'll be playing too many more games.
ReplyDeleteMore seriously though. Are you sure it would just cost that. Is it as simple as that? I mean, is there enough resources to feed the population etc? Is it just a lack of infrastructure. Because 5 billion isn't *that* much.
The short answer is no, I'm not sure, in fact I doubt it would go to everyone, but I do think that they could at least get it for people in the cities, which is most of the population.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding, which is only based on what I read and hear on largely biased sites is that providing lots of the things would only be an expansion of the infrastructure, not a totally new infrastructure. So in Sierra Leone, or Burkina Faso you couldn't do it, but I think that in the case of South Africa clean water is readily available, it's just a matter of piping it through. Electricity is a bit more troublesome, because they have privatised their electric companies.
Plus with an average wage at around $10,000 a year your buck goes much further. But I'm not really sure.
But what I think is that whilever there are people living in abject poverty in South Africa and the government is doing nothing about it, I find the idea of spending so muchmoney on soccer repulsive.
Incidentally, I edited the blog post to more accurately reflect what I know.
ReplyDeleteThanks Tony
Fair enough. I couldn't agree more with your final point, that's for sure. And it's amazing how easy it has been to ignore that until you pointed it out (as are the rest of the world of course).
ReplyDeleteI wonder about these numbers, so I'm sorry to keep asking about them. It's not that I don't believe them. I think what I have trouble swallowing is how doable it seems. I mean if it's true that had they canceled the world cup and built some infrastructure with that money instead, then a significant proportion of these fundamental problems could have been dealt with. That just seems too straight-forward. If every Christian gave up some small fraction of their personal wealth then that would be enough to fix a huge chunk of the world's hunger problems - that seems too easy too. Let's just organise to do that and do it? Why is that a naive proposal?