June 11th, 2010 by Pontus Westerberg
Historically, home nations always do well in the World Cup. Six out of the seven World Cup winners have won on home soil and the host country has never failed to progress to the second round. South Africa, however, is the lowest ranking country to ever host a World Cup and at 83 is even behind New Zealand, generally seen as having no chance at all in the tournament.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how South Africa, cheered on by the fearsome vuvuzela, perform in this tough group A where Mexico and France must be seen as favourites. Despite their low ranking – Bafana Bafana (the Boys), as they’re called by the home crowd – have done very well in the run up to the World Cup, including beating Guatemala 5-0 and Denmark 1-0.
Mexico struggled in the early stages of the qualifications and Sven-Göran Ericsson was sacked as manager after a disappointing loss to Honduras. His replacement, Javier Aguirre, revived the team and they won four out of the five last matches to grab a World Cup place. An offensive team, Mexico recently beat Italy 2-1 and should really win this match.
In the Who Should I Cheer For rankings, Mexico is also clear favourite, being the 15th most supportable team, compared to South Africa in 28th place. Fairly evenly matched in terms of GDP per person, Mexico is far ahead in terms of low carbon emissions and maternal mortality rates and has the tournaments’s lowest military spending, at just 0.4% of GDP. South Africa, on the other hand, is particularly strong when it comes to women in Government, with over 40%. Only Spain (with recent legislation stipulating a 50-50 split between men and women) does better in this area.
South Africa, despite succesfully defeating apartheid 20 years ago, has struggled with increasing levels of inequality and poverty, to the extent that it is now one of the world’s most unequal countries. According to War on Want, South Africa’s constitution, adopted in 1996 and based on the ANC’s Freedom Charter, is one of the most progressive in the world and states that everyone has equal right to adequate housing, healthcare, food and water and a clean environment. Yet, despite these promises the legacy of apartheid remains – in Africa’s richest country 30% of South Africans don’t have access to electricity and 39% to water, for example.
How did this happen? Well, according to Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine, the years between Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 and the 1994 election ANC landslide victory saw long negotiations between the outgoing apartheid National Party and the ANC. The focus of these talks were the high-profile political summits between Mandela and de Klerk, in which the ANC won on almost every count being discussed. But there were also parallel, lower-key economic negotiations taking place, which the ANC (and the world) took a much smaller interest in.
As the political talks progressed and it was clear that parliament would fall into the hands of the ANC, South Africa’s elites started pouring their energy into the economic talks instead. According to Klein, South Africa’s whites had lost the political battle, but they would not give up so easily when it came to protecting their wealth and economic power.
Using a range of policy tools – international trade agreements and structural adjustment programmes, for example – the de Klerk government were able to hand control to ‘impartial experts’ – economists and experts from the IMF, the World Bank, GATT and the National Party. As Klein writes:
The plan was successfully executed under the noses of the ANC leaders, who were naturally preoccupied with winning the battle to control Parliament. In the process, the ANC failed to protect itself against a far more insidous strategy – in essence, an elaborate insurance plan aganst the economic clauses in the Freedom Charter ever becoming law in South Africa.
During the horse-trading that went on in these economic negotiations, the ANC negotiators also gave up things that would make the economic transformation of South Africa a possibility – often without knowing it. One such example was making the central bank independent – a fringe idea, even among right-wing US academics in 1994. And not only that, the newly independent bank wold be run by the man who ran it during apartheid, Chris Stals. The apartheid finance minister, Derek Keyes, would also remain in post.
One of the ANC’s economic advisors, Vishnu Padayachee, was asked by Klein if he thought that the negotiators had realised how much they had given up, he said: “Frankly, no. In the negotiations, something had to be given, and our side gave those things – I’ll give you this, you give me that”.
The ANC were simply outmanouvered on a number of economic issues that seemed less crucial at the time, but made the economic transformation outlined in the Freedom Charter impossible. Klein sums up the problems:
“Want to redistribute land? Impossible – at the last minute, the negotiators agreed to add a clause to the new constitution that protects all private property, making land reform virtually impossible. Want to create jobs for millions of unemployed workers? Can’t – hundreds of factories were actually about to close because the ANC had signed on to the GATT, the precursor to the World Trade Organisation, which made it illegal to subsidize the auto plants and textile factories. Want to get free AIDS drugs to the townships, where the disease is spreading with terrifying speed? That violates an intellectual property rights commitment under the WTO, which the ANC joined with no public debate as a continuation of the GATT. Need money to build more and larger houses for the poor and to bring free electricity to the townships? Sorry, the budget is being eaten up servicing the massive debt, passed on quietly by the apartheid government. Print more money? Tell that to the apartheid-era head of the central bank. Free water for all? Not likely. The World Bank…is making private sector partnerships the service norm. Want to impose currency controls to guard against wild speculation? That would violate the $850 million IMF deal, signed, conveniently enough, right before the elections. Raise the minimum wage to close the apartheid income gap? Nope. The IMF deal promises ‘wage restraint’. And don’t even think about ignoring these commitments – any change will be evidence of dangerous national untrustworthiness, a lack of commitment to ‘reform’, an absence of a ‘rules-based system’. All of which will lead to currency crashes, aid cuts and capital flight. “
Patrick Bond, who worked as economic adviser in Mandela’s office during the early years of ANC’s rule (and wrote a recent blog post for WDM) recalls that the in-house quip in those years ‘Hey, we got the state, now where is the power’.
In this match, I hope that South Africa keeps it current form and beats Mexico. It would be great for the World Cup, great for South Africa and great for Africa generally. I’m cheering for South Africa.
Posted in: Mexico, South Africa, South Africa-Mexico
Pontus Westerberg is web officer at WDM. Terribly disappointed that his native Sweden has not qualified for the World Cup, he is putting all his effort into Who Should I Cheer For instead. He is cheering for Nigeria.
Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.
