Rewarding love is a worthwhile endeavor. A reward signifies acknowledgment that the recipient is seen and appreciated. The South African World Cup is an exciting time for South Africans who have been loving soccer for decades. But if you look closely at how Africa has reacted since 2004 when South Africa was awarded the World Cup, you will notice that much of Africa has been acting as if they are co-hosts, as if this is the first communally-hosted World Cup. If this concept is difficult to grasp, just think of how excited Canadians would be if Mexico won the right to host the World Cup, or how excited the French would be at the prospect of an Italian World Cup, or how excited Peruvians are that Brazil is hosting the 2014 World Cup. If the past is anything to go by, most nations aren’t excited by another country winning the right to host the World Cup simply because countries share a continent. But across the African continent, the excitement for this World Cup is palpable.
Africa is different than other continents. You can ask an Argentine if s/he is proud of being South American, or an Italian if s/he is proud of being European and get a very confused look in return. But set foot in any number of African countries and ask the same question about Africanness and you’ll notice a look, not only of understanding, but one that shows an inherent pride in being African. Even though South America has Spanish as a common thread linguistically tying most of the continent together, the sense of continental identification in South America pales in comparison to the willingness and ease of identifying as African across Africa’s fifty plus nations and seemingly infinite number of dialects and cultures.
There are historical reasons for the existence of a common African identity. For centuries, a collective Africanness has been imposed on the continent from outside in spite of the existence of easily identifiable and unique local identities. Africa effectively became the ‘other’ or ‘not Europe’ and the concept grew into a continental identity that took root in a way that didn’t in Asia and the Americas. These developments explain why even today it’s not uncommon to hear people refer to Africa as a country, or even for people to ask if you speak African, a language so difficult to master that no one can speak it. I have never heard anyone ask me if I spoke North American and have never heard people wondering if they can take classes in South American, European or Asian. Largely out of ignorance, Africa, in many ways, has become a singular place, a singular idea, and this discourse, for better or worse, has morphed into a universally recognized but difficult to explain Africanness that is now embraced by many of the continent’s residents.
It is in this context that South Africa getting the 2010 World Cup resonates across Africa as if the tournament is being hosted by the entire continent, regardless of whether the financial benefits of hosting will reach other African countries.
This may explain why Africans are excited, but it doesn’t necessarily explain why they should be rewarded with a World Cup. The official reason is that World Cups are now rotated between regions so everyone gets a turn. The idea of rotating World Cups is nice gesture, but this technical concept alone undercuts the rationale for why Africa, the continent, deserves to host the World Cup.
In my travels across the African continent, I’ve grown to appreciate what it is to truly love football. I thought I loved the sport having spent my childhood surrounded by posters of John Barnes, Ruud Gullit and Maradona. But posters have always been relatively easy to acquire. Without your posters, t-shirts and videos, how would you display your passion? Would you dedicate your bike, bus, food stall or butcher shop to players or teams that will probably never come to your country to see your passion? Imagine your local butcher (or perhaps first imagine you have a local butcher) painting his shop facade in Arsenal colors as a tribute to a team thousands of miles away without any benefits of sponsorship or partnership. Across Africa, you will encounter countless examples of people’s pure unadulterated love for the game expressed in some very random and awesome ways; ways that put my now tattered posters to shame.
The 2010 World Cup is a reward, not just for South Africa’s dynamic soccer community or for years of marginalization during apartheid, but at a much more basic level, for the uncompromising passion and support by Africans across the continent for the sport. This probably isn’t the underlying rationale for why South Africa was awarded the World Cup, but it does explain why South Africa’s selection means so much in the face of detractors intent on undermining the decision almost purely based on logistics.
The picture at the top of this piece is of a local butchery right outside of Nakuru, the capital of the Kenya’s Rift Valley Province. Cesc Fabregas and Arsene Wenger aren’t coming by anytime soon to pick up fresh slabs of meat. But that didn’t stop the owner from pulling together supplies to paint the face of his shop in Arsenal colors, complete with the Arsenal crest and a proud and pronounced shop name, Highbury Butchery, an ode to the old, historic home of the Gunners that has been transformed into condominiums.
Below is a photo of a bike from the outskirts of Nairobi leaning against the wall of a local pub where fans were taking in a full day of English Premier League action. You can’t mistake who the owner of this tricked out delivery bike supports, nor can you mistake the fact that the bike’s owner is well aware that Arsenal has moved on from Highbury to Emirates Stadium, which is an impressive feat given that the owner is a self-described non-internet user.
When asked whether I think Africa deserves to host the World Cup, my instinct isn’t to first think of stadiums, although that’s obviously an important factor in a region’s ability to host. Rather, my instinct is to think about the people I’ve encountered across the continent who invest so much of their lives into a sport that many, particularly in the United States, take for granted if not ignore. Whether you’re in rural, urban or suburban Africa, you can find kids playing, adults watching, and bikes, buses and butcher shops standing as inanimate testaments to soccer’s transcendent role in daily life. For that, Africa, not just South Africa, deserves to be rewarded with the tournament that brings life to a screeching halt.
Deserving isn’t just about logistics. It’’s also about fundamental fairness and recognition of what people contribute, especially in proportion to what they have. Perhaps the one consistent thread that cuts across the socio-economic spectrum in Africa is a love for soccer. The love of the game and the ingenuity that is born out of this love doesn’t deserve perpetual marginalization; it deserves a World Cup.
Well said. What I find interesting is that Africanness is exemplified mainly in football and not much else. If only we could apply it to the political arena as well.