Lesson of Fifa and Blatter’s woes: scrap World Cups and Olympics

What you need to know:

  • The participants would meet the kinds of people they did not know existed on the other side of the world, and the hosts too would have a dramatic education about the Earth they inhabited and its people.
  • So, World Cups and Olympics are becoming nothing more than tourism marketing and image-pimping exercises for authoritarian governments with deep pockets.
  • South Africa blew its fortune on the 2010 World Cup, and after the euphoria we all got from it faded, it was left with jobless, frustrated citizens who took out their machetes and clubs and went out to kill and rob African immigrants in xenophobic attacks recently.

In recent days we have been riveted by stories of corruption in world football that led eventually to the stubborn supremo of Fifa to announce his resignation.

That was after having just been re-elected only four days earlier. We must give the devil his due. Sepp Blatter resigned because he could see that the storms were truly gathering this time.

Contrast that to Ivory Coast former president Laurent Gbagbo, who tried to steal re-election at the end of 2010. He refused to hand over power and, as rebels and international forces closed in on him, he dug in.

After he lost every territory in Ivory Coast except State House, he still refused to give it up. And when, in April 2011, tanks and rebels were breaking down the front door of State House, he hid in an underground cell with his wife, still claiming he was president of a 15 square-metre hole.

However, we need to gain the right lessons from the Fifa bribes affair. Everyone is calling for “reform” and honest leaders, but that does not seem to be the real problem.

It seems that Fifa’s cash cow, the World Cup, and apparently the source of much of the corruption, has to all intents and purposes become a useless thing.

The World Cup, like the Olympics — another increasingly worthless undertaking — was conceived in a very different world. That was the age before commercial aeroplane travel, when a team would travel for weeks by ship — and camel and horseback — to the games in a host country.

DRAMATIC EDUCATION

The participants would meet the kinds of people they did not know existed on the other side of the world, and the hosts too would have a dramatic education about the Earth they inhabited and its people.

So, in times past, you would arrive at the games not aware of the talents of the other athletes. Even up to 1936 — and indeed for another four decades after that — it was possible for an American star and field sensation to arrive at the Berlin Olympics and blow away Adolf Hitler’s racist prejudices and stun the world with a record-breaking 100 metres run (and win three other golds in 200 metres, long jump, and the 4x100 metres relay too).

However, every footballer and athlete today arrives at a competition with the data on all the games or races (including the one in his village) in the world he has been involved in at the fingertips of sports journalists and commentators. Even the names of their dogs and cats are known. So there might be upsets, but no surprises.

During the Africa Cup of Nations this year (Afcon 2015), in the semi-finals moreover, you would have thought that all African football fans would have been following “our thing” and not be obsessing with the English Premier League. But on all the days when there was an Afcon match and a Premier League game on at the same time, I kept score of the trending topics (in Kenya at least), and almost all the time the Premier League beat Afcon hands down.

TOURSM MARKETING

So, World Cups and Olympics are becoming nothing more than tourism marketing and image-pimping exercises for authoritarian governments with deep pockets.

Because they have pots of money, and often are unaccountable, competing against similar countries and a few democratic ones (that have nosy parliaments and media watching how they spend taxpayers’ money), they are happy to bribe crooks in Fifa and regional football authorities for the right to host.

Among other things, this is bidding up the cost of hosting Olympics and World Cups, and all they are doing is leaving behind bankrupt treasuries or impoverished citizens. Even Brazil nearly collapsed under the weight of holding the last World Cup.

South Africa blew its fortune on the 2010 World Cup, and after the euphoria we all got from it faded, it was left with jobless, frustrated citizens who took out their machetes and clubs and went out to kill and rob African immigrants in xenophobic attacks recently.

If the world is so connected by travel, internet, 24-hour cable TV, and we can see our favourite players and watch the world’s best athletes running against each other in thrilling contests every week, why do the Brazilians have to bankrupt their country and provoke national unrest by holding a World Cup?

The author is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com). Twitter@cobbo3