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Last night I found myself in the strange position of cheering my heart out for a Dutch team playing in South Africa – given the history of the dreadful Dutch role in apartheid that was something I would have never envisaged happening. But my cheers were really for Ghana, as Holland avenged Uruguay for knocking the wonderful Ghanaians out of the world cup with a deliberate hand ball (yes, I know I should have let go of that by now – I’m working on it).

So tonight, how the six teams (oops, seven if you include Holland) I was following are not playing – who should I cheer for? Spain or Germany.

Well, win-wise they are fairly equal – both teams having lost just one (albeit quite surprising) match each. In terms of social justice indicators they are fairly even too. Both countries give a similar amount in aid (ie for health European economies – not enough). Germany has less carbon emissions than Spain but then Spain’s inequality difference is slightly less than Germany. Hmm.

The only thing is that when Germany won their matches, they really won! Except of course when Ghana managed to limit them to only one goal – sorry, had to get that in. Otherwise it was a clear 4:1 or 4:0 hammering. I would like to say that Spain’s fabulous 50% representation of women in government was a similarly thumping victory which would have helped in my choice dilemma, but actually, Germany aren’t far behind on 46.2% and they have a female Chancellor.

So I’m still undecided. But in a world cup that saw some teams have progress because of unfair decisions and plain cheating I think I’m going to go by something my son told me. He said Spain have been the cleanest team of the world cup with only 3 yellow cards even at this stage. Having been upset at Ghana’s unjust exit (and other more major injustices around the world ranging from bankers’ greed pushing people further into poverty or the ravaging impacts of climate change suffered by people that didn’t even cause it) I think my cheering criteria should be judged by fairness and so I will celebrate with Spain’s in their clean and justified arrival at the semis.

Posted in: Germany, Spain, Spain v Germany

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

In the UK  and across the globe, debate, anger and  fear are raging over the austerity measures  that are being imposed to cure economic ailments. The World Cup has offered us welcome distraction from the constant scare mongering generated by governments’ PR machines that tell us the debt problem (or really any problem you can think of) must be solved by cuts, cuts, cuts. They all say tell us ‘We know what is best for you, shut your eyes, open your mouth, take the medicine it will cure all our ills. Watch the football, drink your beer, stay on the sofa there’s a good chap.’

But the World Development Movement and others don’t want you to stay on your sofa. We have campaigned for decades to stop institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank from forcing developing countries to introduce public service cuts, privatisation and reductions in government  spending. Sound familiar?

We campaign against these measures  because the evidence categorically shows that these policies hurt people in developing countries making them poorer, and the gap grows chasmic between the richest and poorest. We have been vindicated, in the late 1990s even the World Bank and IMF slowly slowly began to change their neoliberal tune.  Ok so they weren’t exactly singing the Internationale, but they introduced measures to try and provide a safety net to cushion people against the worst aspects of poverty that these policies brought. And ok it wasn’t that sucessful, but we were somewhere in the argument that more privatisation and less government spending on, let’s say schools and midwives salaries, do not in fact cure the debt crisis, do not cure poverty but do bring unemployment, more children and mothers dying in childbirth and plummeting literacy rates .

But somewhere along the line we’ve lost the argument again because those same policies are being introduced now in the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Spain, the UK…. read behind the spin of ‘free’ schools or of ‘efficiency savings’ in the NHS and you’ll see they are the same old policies with prettier names. So our governments are singing loudly that neoliberal anthem that’s been discredited and discarded by its inventors for over a decade.

Brazil is one of the many countries that had to undergo the structural adjustment or economic shock therapy imposed by the IMF during the 1980s and 1990s. This included the economic policies described above to try to reduce its debts. Analysis from Oxfam showed the results:

• 43% of Brazilians – over 60 million people – lack the essentials of a decent life
• One in three children drop out of school without completing primary education
• 90% of sewage is untreated

Brazil now is also being hit by the economic recession, but they are still a growing economy. Having seen his country decimated by the cuts agenda in the past, President Lula does not sing from the neoliberal song book, instead   Lula wants to invest in new roads, highspeed trains and new homes for people on low incomes.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, the new coalition government will be bringing in austerity measures that Brazil eshews. The Guardian argued that people voted for austerity with a conscience. The argument seems to be that the coalition is softened, in a similar way to the UK, by the Dutch equivalent of the Lib Dems. Not so soft?

I can’t make predictions for the match, but my prediction for the countries that bring in austerity measures: inquality and poverty will increase. I feel like sitting on my sofa, having a beer, watching the match to forget that the next generation of kids might go to a school run by Tesco where they are trained to work for Tesco, they will live in a Tesco housing estate and they will eat Tesco food.

But I won’t – what I will do is check out No Shock Doctrine for Britain who are campaigning against the cuts, and work to force those in power and in wealth see that austerity is not the medecine that will cure us, it is the medicine that no matter how much sugar we pile on top of it will only hurt us.

Posted in: Brazil, Global injustice, Netherlands, Uncategorized, Who am I cheering for?

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

Ghana and the USA are at opposite ends of the social justice spectrum according to whoshouldicheerfor.com, but could all this change given that new oil has just been found off Ghana’s coastline? Reports abound as to whether this discovery and commercial exploitation by Irish company, Tullow oil (with the considerable financial backing of UK tax payer backed Royal Bank of Scotland) is a plague – or more commonly known as the ‘oil curse’ – or  a silver bullet which will deliver economic development and prosperity to the people of Ghana.

The oil curse is a phenomemon where a country is sucked dry of its oil, whilst its citizens continue to go hungry, whilst foreign multinationals reap the rewards and neighbours fight over whose oil it was in the first place (see the Tullow oil backed civil war on the border of Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo) and spills happen with no compensation (see Nigeria not the USA)  nor furrowed brows from oil execs (see BP’s Tony Haywood except whilst on yaughting trips) nor the international outcry or media attention.

So is oil the route to prosperity and riches? In the US, surely the land that represents prosperity and riches above and beyond any other country, it is now seen as a plague that even the super power cannot control. And so after decades of over consumption and addiction, even Americans are finally eshewing the black stuff. And rightly so, it’s devastating the lives of millions of people around the world  going unnoticed by the main stream media – oil coating coast lines and wild life that were previously pristine. And the carbon emissions deriving from oil are staggering and have pushed us to the brink of climate catastrophe that will hit the poorest people worst. But similarly to oil spills, will people only really begin to listen and act when climate change hits the USA?

In the UK right now, campaigning and activism is ramping up, spelling out trouble for BP itself and those that it sponsors. The folks at Fair Pensions have been doing a stirling job pushing for pension funds to stop investing in BP and Shell, and it’s pretty likely that your pension is in Deep water. BP is an enormously important stock for British pension funds, and with BP under pressure to scrap its next quarterly dividend – and facing the possibility of a takeover if the share price continues to fall – there is real potential for this crisis to damage UK savings.

More could have been done to foresee and prevent this catastrophe, but despite clear warning signs that BP was exposing our money to unacceptable risks, few investors acted to demand that the company address those risks. You can call on Pensions Minister Steve Webb to toughen up the standards for pension funds, so that our pensions, people and the planet are better protected against future crises.

Also the arts in the UK are enjoying the profits of Big Oil. This Monday (28th) the Tate is having a Summer Party celebrating 20 years of BP sponsorship.  Taking money from BP lends big corporate oil the kudos of a key public cultural institution – it hands over a licence to spill. The vast and ugly Gulf of Mexico oil spill shows for the thousandth time that Big Oil sees no risk too reckless.  Public art institutions should no longer prop them up.  Yet, Shell and BP have between them sponsored almost all of London’s most prestigious museums and cultural institutions over the course of the last decade.

And, it’s peanuts – the actual figure has been kept hidden by both BP and Tate but it’s estimated to be as little as 0.5% of Tate’s annual budget.  They stopped taking tobacco money and it’s high time for them to stop taking oil money.  The pressure is ramping up – you can play a part of it

Today I will be sitting on the fence, cheering for two countries that are so different, but I fear that the oil plague that is on both their houses will bring them similarities that are not  the promised prosperity but the unspoken devastation and dispair

Posted in: Ghana, Ghana-USA, Global injustice, USA

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

Ghanaian supporters hung out of windows, waving flags, cheering, singing, blowing whistles. Roads were jammed as fans partied in the street. Anyone would have thought Ghana had won the world cup, yet this was the scene in South London in 2006 after Brazil knocked Ghana out of the tournament. As one passer by apparently commented – ‘If this happens when they lose, what on earth would they be like if they won?’

This year I wanted a taste of Ghanaian football. I headed to the Gold Coast Ghanaian Bar, South Norwood, for the Ghana v Serbia match (ranked No1 and No17 in the Who Should I Cheer For ratings). The atmosphere was fantastic. Everyone was in party mood. Cheering and whistle blowing was the backdrop to intermittent roars of triumph as Ghana’s Black Stars approached the goal mouth.

Suddenly the screen went blank. The patrons, who’d been tightly packed into their viewing area didn’t moan, they just scrambled their way over chairs in the rush to watch the screen outside. Cheers and whistle blowing resumed and we continued to enjoy the match. A guy closest to the screen, decided to get up and dance. There were no shouts of ‘sit down – I can’t see the screen’, everyone seemed happy in his happiness! Dance over, he sat down and everyone could see the screen again.

Until that screen went blank too. Surely this time surely people would get agitated.

But they didn’t. They danced! All I had to compare this scenario to was what I thought it would have been like had it been England playing – tutting, shouting, demands for a refund and maybe objects thrown at the screen in frustration. But the Ghanaians danced!

Their patience was rewarded. Within a couple of minutes of the screen flickering back on Ghana’s Gyan scored what was to be the winning goal. If a screen going off in the middle of a match can generate dancing and signing, imagine the reaction to Ghana’s first goal of World Cup 2010! It was electric.

I began to wonder how life would be if Ghanaians were running things. For years Ghana has been fighting privatisation of its water supply. Fighting water companies from rich countries from taking over the Ghanaian water supply because the companies would be focusing on profit not on supplying water to those who need it most. Ghana, along with other countries in the south want their own communities to manage their water. How would it be if Ghana was doing its own thing?

In England and the west we have been taught, consciously or subconsciously, that individuals have top priority and this sometimes manifests itself as having a right to be happy even at the expense of others. So it follows that a western company will see nothing wrong in going in to a country and maximising profit even at the expense of the individuals who live there. But in Ghana there seems to more of a community spirit thing going on – what is important is doing things together as a community and being happy together. In terms of supplying clean water, this wouldn’t mean maximum profit for a few – this would mean ensuring fairness for all.

This year I asked a Ghanaian supporter what on earth would have happened if Ghana had beaten Brazil instead of being knocked out by them in 2006. You know what he told me – that the crazy, exuberant, happy celebrations would have been the same – because what they were rejoicing in was even bigger than world cup football.

They were celebrating their community.

Posted in: Ghana, Serbia, Serbia-Ghana

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

I was surprised to find that that South Korea is ranked only 29th out of the 32 countries by ‘Who should I cheer for’ below even England and only two places above the US! The issue South Korea really loses out in the ranking is the amount it spends on the military (as well as its high carbon dioxide emissions). South Korea spends on weapons 2.6 times the amount that Argentina does and emits 9.7 tons of  carbon dioxide per person compared to just the 3.7 tons per person which Argentina emits.

With a nuclear armed North Korea as a neighbour, perhaps this high military spending is understandable? After all it is easy to put the blame on North Korea with the many horrendous human rights abuses committed by the fascist regime of Kim Jong-il. But to understand how we ended up in this precarious situation of a Korea split in to two heavily militarised states; which are still officially at war it is necessary to understand the history of the division. Korea was liberated in 1945 from Japanese rule, in the south of the country by the US and in the north by the USSR.

It is often held that the Korean War was started by the war mongering North Korea simply invading the South. This ignores the complexities of the issue. In his insightful book, Rogue State, William Blum highlights that under US occupation their progressive wartime allies (who were extremely popular) were violently suppressed and the US instead supported the conservatives who had collaborated with the Japanese. This made unification of Korea near impossible and essentially made the Korean War, in which 2.5 million civilians were murdered, inevitable.

The war would see many war crimes and not just ones committed by the North, which had a policy of assassinating all intelligencia located in the South. Just as horrific was the South’s mass killing of anyone suspected of being a communist sympathiser which led to up to 100,000 bodies being dumped in trenches, mines and the sea. The US too committed many war crimes. For example, concerned that there might be some northern soldiers mixed in with group of 400 civilians they decided to machine gun all of the unarmed civilians and massacred hundreds more by happily blowing up bridges packed full of fleeing refugees. Not only did the US repression cause the Korean War and cost nearly four and a half million people their lives, it also led to a long line of corrupt, reactionary, and ruthless dictatorships in South Korea.

The blame must be layed squarely at the door of the US, UK and other NATO countries, but given the memory of the dead and the many fears for the future; I will find it hard to cheer for anyone during the games which either of the Koreas are playing in.

Posted in: Argentina, Matches, South Korea, Teams

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

At my primary school only boys were allowed to play football. At the age of 8, I remember feeling like this was a terrible injustice, because I hated netball. My secondary school was a girls’ grammar school where all sports except football were taught, including rugby and cricket.

If I had the opportunity to play football at school, would I feel more of an affinity with the sport now? Try as I might, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s a man’s game and has very little to do with me.

In the public arena, it is still a man’s game, even if it’s changing slowly. Now, the girls at my old secondary school play in football leagues, and it’s pretty much the norm for girls to play football at school. Will this eventually lead to women’s football being as popular as men’s football? I wonder.

In 1921, women’s football was banned by the FA on the ground that “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.” The ban was only lifted in 1971. Women footballers had to wait until 1991 for the first Women’s World Cup.

Many international women football players have to work full time to subsidise their football careers because they don’t get paid enough. Is women’s football still sidelined and devalued because it is deemed to be “unsuitable for females”?

In the new UK coalition government, one would be forgiven for thinking that those in charge see politics as unsuitable for women. 75.5% of elected MPs are men, with only one female cabinet member. And perhaps it’s not just those in charge.

The day after the recent UK election, I had a conversation with a politically far-left-leaning man. His explanation for the lack of women in government was that “maybe it’s because women don’t want to get involved with a bunch of slimy politicians. They’re probably wise to stay out of it.”

I wonder if that’s what men in Switzerland thought during the referendum in 1959 where the majority of men voted ‘no’ to oppose women’s suffrage. And if that’s what the conservative women’s group ‘Federation of Swiss Women against Women’s Right to Vote’ were thinking.

Is women’s representation in government really just about whether women are interested in politics, just as, I ask, is the lack of coverage of women’s football really about not enough people being interested enough to watch it? Surely it’s more about a society’s lack of encouragement and commitment to equal opportunities?

Today, only 14.3% of Switzerland’s government are women. It sounds worse if you look at it in another way: 85.7% of people in government are men. It’s hardly surprising given the long struggle for women’s suffrage in Switzerland. Switzerland was the last country in Europe to grant the vote to women; women didn’t gain the right to vote in federal elections until 1971.

If politics is a dirty game and women can act as atrociously in power as men, some ask whether having more women in politics would necessarily bring about a fairer world? The president of Spain, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, is a self-avowed feminist and thinks it does matter – on  principle of fairness and equality.

“One thing that really awakens my rebellious streak is 20 centuries of one sex dominating another”, he said. “We talk of slavery, feudalism, exploitation, but the most unjust domination if that of one-half of the human race over the other.”

Zapatero was elected in 2004 in part on his promise to improve women’s position in society, in what is still a machismo culture. Now, because of a gender equality law, 50% of people in Spain’s parliament are women. It wasn’t difficult to get 50% representation, it just took political will at the top.

So, that’s why I’m cheering for Spain. My own disenfranchisement from football at school and the lack of representation by my own sex in the UK parliament means I have little interest in supporting England in the Men’s World Cup 2010. And besides, Spanish players are better looking. Oh, and a tip for those thinking of making a trip to the bookies: I have it on good authority that Spain are going to win.

Posted in: Global injustice, Matches, Spain, Switzerland, Teams

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

I am a soft touch when it comes to underdogs: I wear a badge that says: ‘I heart migrants‘; I buy the Big Issue; and I work for the World Development Movement to combat the injustice that is rife through out the world. And now I am faced with a choice between Ghana – the top dog of the underdogs according to Who Should I Cheer For?; and Serbia – the country that shot to fame in the 1990s as an international pariah. So for most people, the choice of which team to cheer for based on ‘underdog’ criteria would be simple. For me, not so simple.

But life, politics and war is never simple. Let me announce my bias: my father’s family is from Serbia, from a city called Kragujevac, which is known for a massacre of up to 5000 people in 1941 at the hands of the Nazis. My grandfather fled the country and walked across Europe with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Massacres and deeply held resentments have been prominent in the former Yugoslavia’s turbulent history for centuries and the war crimes that took place at the hands of the Serbs in the 1990s are clear to everyone. And now to the Serbs themselves, who because of the propaganda pedalled by Milosevic and the closure of independent media, did not know of the true extent of the genocidal war that was being waged in their name.

But what they did know is that they were under attack from sanctions, from NATO bombing and economic collapse. By the year 2000, Serbia was the poorest country in Europe. It was the year that I went to visit my family in Kragujevac and saw the embarrassment and anger in my cousin’s face when admitted that she had been ‘paid’ in eggs that week.

This was also the year that Milosevic was finally forced from power.  The Milosevic regime’s tactics to stay in power were violent and omnipotent, including hundreds of thousands of fake ballot papers, the arrest, detention and ‘diasppearances’ of journalists, opposition activists and judges who sympathised with the opposition. One judge was murdered when he refused to issue an arrest warrant for two opposition leaders. And the disappearance and death of Ivan Stambolic, the former Prime Minister, who turned against Milosevic and gave support to the leader of the opposition party, Vojislav Kostunica.

Kostunica was leading a shakey coalition of 18 opposition parties, and despite Milosevic’s repression, they organised election monitors, mobililsed people, and collaborated with the powerful student movement, Otpor.  After the contested election of September 2000, a month of mass strikes and one million people descended on Belgrade from across the country, including elderly  farmers on tractors and bulldozers. They broke through police lines and faced tear gas and stormed parliament forcing Milosevic’s resgination on October 5th.

The last decade has not been easy for Serbs. The chasm between the rich and the poor has widened. Although, there’s no data available in government numbers for the clever people behind whoshouldicheerfor.com to crunch, inequality has increased after the IMF imposed its usual draconian economic conditions, like privatisation of electricty, education and health care, in return for loans.

The poorest people in Serbia (and Eastern Europe) who have suffered greatly are the Roma population. Roma people are widely discriminated against, are the target of racist attacks and fail to access public services. Currently, in Serbia the situation of Roma people is particularly worrying with 30 per cent of the population living on less than $2 a day; entire communities unable to access health care, education and live in shanty towns. It’s my bet that data for the Roma population is not included in official government stats, because Roma people tend not to have birth certificates, ID or permanent addresses. If the stats for Roma people were available to us the maternal mortality, hunger and life expectancy results would be a lot worse.

So I will be cheering for Serbia: for the Roma people – the underdogs of Europe; for the Serbs who bravely and peacefully overthrew a genocidal dictator; and for my family, and all families, who are still struggling to get by.

p.s. Amnesty International is running a campaign to stop forced evictions of Roma communities in Serbia, please do get involved.

The symbol of Otpor's resistance against the Milosevic regime, it appeared in badges, stickers, posters, banners, graffiti, t-shirts and as a tattoo on my colleague, James' arm!

Posted in: Ghana, Global injustice, Serbia, Serbia-Ghana, Teams, Who am I cheering for?

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

After using the ‘Who should I cheer for’ website to compare Argentina and Nigeria, I was struck by the many compelling reasons to cheer for Nigeria in this match. For example, the average Nigerian is thirteen times poorer than the average Argentine and as such Nigeria is definitely the underdog in the match. While Nigerian’s emit nearly 75 per cent less CO2 per person, and the country spends less on its military and has more women in government.

However, the whole concept behind ‘Who should I cheer for’ is to get people thinking differently and not just conforming to their normal national ties and prejudices. Being English, not supporting Argentina would seem a little too much like conformity. After all the English enjoy hating Argentina (along with Germany) almost as much as they love supporting England. This national dislike of Argentine football teams is a mixture of geo politics and footballing grievances. First, came the invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982, when both Thatcher and the Argentine Junta used the blood and bodies of their countries’ youth to whip up support for their deeply unpopular domestic policies; the ensuing state violence left 258 British and 649 Argentines dead. And then if war wasn’t enough, to top it off, this was followed just four years later by the infamous Maradona ‘hand of God’ incident during Argentina’s 2-1 victory over England in the World Cup quarter final. To say nothing of David Beckham’s red card in the second round of the 1998 World Cup.

So to avoid bowing to conformity, I will be cheering for Argentina in solidarity with the workers of occupied cooperatives.

In the wake of the 2001 IMF sponsored economic meltdown, millions were left jobless and had their savings wiped out. Meanwhile, the rich who had benefited from the IMF economic policies upped and left the country taking their savings with them and leaving the country to fend for itself. But the people who had been locked out of their bankrupted workplaces chose not to stand idly by. They refused to allow their livelihoods be sold off to the highest bidder to satisfy the profits of foreign banks. Instead they broke in to their old workplaces; armed only with sleeping bags and simply refused to leave, defying the banks, their former bosses, the police and judges. Around 200 factories, bankrupt and abandoned by their owners, were taken over by their workers and turned into co-ops. And the workers began to produce goods for the community – providing both much needed work and goods. From tractor plants to supermarkets, printing houses to aluminium factories and pizza parlours, decisions about company policy were made in open assemblies and the profits split equally among the workers, they turned former exploitive sweatshops into a real alternative to private corporations.

In the wake of our own economic collapse and under threat of devastating public sector cuts and mass unemployment, it’s time for the English to look past their differences with Argentina and learn from Argentine workers. The millionaires that make up Argentina’s national team must also learn from the occupied factories and start playing as a collective like the workers of the cooperatives do; if they are to progress in the World Cup.

Posted in: Argentina, Argentina-Nigeria, Matches, Nigeria, Teams

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

Last night I couldn’t get my 13 year old son to go to bed.  Nothing unusual in that. He was glued to the computer. Not unusual either.  But what was unusual was that he was obsessing over social justice indicators – which countries give most aid to poorer countries (the Netherlands come out pretty well giving 0.82% of their GDP (hooray), compared to the US’s 0.22%) and how many women are in government in Italy compared to South Africa (Italy only have 8.3% (boo!), whilst South Africa have a healthy 41.4%;).

The ‘Who Should I Cheer For?’ rankings generated a lot of thought and discussion about topics that I’m sure most teenage year old boys wouldn’t usually be that interested in.  They also gave us something to think about should the unthinkable happen and our teams get knocked out and we have to think about finding someone else to cheer for.

However with my family supporting 6(!) teams between us, I think we should be alright for a while… Of course we’ll be supporting England as our home team; my eldest son is claiming that his 1/16 Spanish heritage justifies his choice of team as Spain; my Ghanaian heritage and of course the terrible way the ref treated them in the last world cup in their match against Italy, means I will be cheering for the ‘Black Stars’; I still can’t help but support Cameroon even all these years after Roger Miller’s fantastic goal in the 1990 World cup. Then of course there’s Brazil and no matter how hard I try, previous years have shown me that I just can’t help having a sneak peek when they’re playing which always leaves me bedazzled and rooting for the yellow and green magicians.

This year though I think the South African team may steal my heart and support – what a wonderful moment for the nation and Nelson Mandela to be hosting such a major world tournament, having been banned from so many sporting events during the apartheid era. What a fantastic testimony to all the people around the world who went on marches, lobbied their MPs and pushed for a fair South Africa.  It shows just what can happen when people campaign together.

Posted in: Who am I cheering for?

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

Sweden had scored 1-0 early in the first half and dominated the match, but Hungary had equalised after a cheap penalty decision with just ten minutes to go. The World Cup dream looked far away.

But in the 94th minute Rasmus Elm sent a long ball down the middle of the pitch which Zlatan Ibrahimovic managed to just get a toe on. The goal keeper saved, but the return hit Zlatan squarely in the stomach and the ball slowly slid into the goal, just as the referee blew the final whistle.

At that elated moment I was sure that Sweden was going to make it. A win against Malta and a draw away against Denmark would secure at least a play-off place.

But things don’t always turn out the way you expect them to. After just barely beating Malta, Sweden lost the final match in Copenhagen and Denmark won the group. They say that to qualify for a world cup you have to win every home game and draw every away game. Sweden lost two – home and away to Denmark – and for the first time in 12 years, will not take part in a major football tournament.

I remember the 1998 World Cup well. I was 17 and in Spain for the first time, drinking San Miguel (legal drinking age – 16!) and watching football in the bars of a small town in Catalonia.

Norway, managed by ‘Drillo’ Olsen – an eccentric who wore green wellington boots to matches – beat Brazil 2-1 in the group stages. It was the first time South Africa – Bafana Bafana – had qualified, but disappointingly failed to make it past the group stage. Ronaldo’s mysterious illness. Owen’s goal. And of course course France’s 3-0 win over Brazil in the final.

But there was no Sweden. Just like this year.

So who will I cheer for instead? Last time this happened I supported Scandinavian neigbours Norway, along with South Africa, where my parents lived at the time. But what about this time? Denmark is out of the question having been the team that knocked out Sweden and I’ve not been too impressed with Bafana Bafana the last few years.

I do like an an underdog though, and in the spirit of Who Should I Cheer For? I wanted to support a team which scores fairly high on the rankings. I also wanted to take into consideration the fact that the world cup is being played in Africa, which is also the contintent where I spent half my upbringing and where my parents have lived for over 20 years.

An African team then. But which one?

Algeria? No, I think Egypt is a better team and deserved to win that play off match instead of them. Cameroon? Perhaps, but as much as I loved Roger Milla in ’90 and ’94 I think they’ve lost some of their lustre. Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire? Not a fan of big star players (apart from Zlatan of course).

Luckily, the choice is quite an easy one. About two months ago – Lasse Lagerbäck, the manager who had taken Sweden to five European Championships and World Cups in a row and had lost his job when Sweden failed to qualify for South Africa – was unexpectedly announced as the new manager for Nigeria.

With a GDP per capita of just $1,128, Nigeria is the poorest country in the World cup. 158th out of 182 countries on the Human Development Index, with 53 percent of the population not having access to clean drinking and 84% living on less than $2 a day, it’s amazing that they manage to qualify time after time again. Nigeria also comes number 7 in the Who Should I Cheer For? rankings.

In Southern Nigeria is the Niger Delta, one of the world’s 10 most important wetland and marine ecosystems and home to 31 million people. It also has one of the world’s largest oil deposits – extracted for years by multinational corporations. However, despite the oil generating more than $600 billion since the 1960s, very little has actually gone to the impoverished Ongoni people who live in the area.

Instead the oil industry has caused an environmenal and human distaster. Every year there are oil spills equivalent in size to the Exxon Valdez disaster. According to Amnesty:

“Millions of people in the Niger Delta have seen their lives and livelihoods destroyed by Shell’s approach to oil production. Water pollution has killed the fish they rely on for food and income. Land pollution has made it impossible to grow crops. And today 75% of the area’s rural population have no access to clean water.”

More than 60% of the people living in the area rely on the natural environment for their livelihoods, yet the oil spills are having massive negative effects on their ability to survive – killing fish, polluting drinking water and poisoining agricultural land. This in turn is causing people to turn to stealing oil and vandalising infrastructure and several armed groups have formed to fight over the scarce resources. According to an Amnesty report:

“Armed groups are increasingly demanding greater control of resources in the region, and engage in large-scale theft of oil and the ransoming of oil workers. Government reprisals against militancy and violence frequently involve excessive force, and communities are subjected to violence and collective punishment, deepening anger and resentment.”

The government reprisals include the 1996 hanging of nine Ongoni activists, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, by the Nigerian state. A 2001 Greenpeace report found that:

“Shell and the military had bribed them [witnessses in the case] with promises of money and jobs at Shell. Shell admitted having given money to the Nigerian military, who brutally tried to silence the voices which claimed justice.”

The Amnesty report also shows that Shell is to blame for most of the problems reported. You can take action by writing to Shell’s CEO over at the Amnesty website.

So there you have it. I am cheering for Nigeria in the 2010 football world cup.

Go Super Eagles!

Posted in: Nigeria, Who am I cheering for?

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.