FIFA’s President Sepp Blatter in South Africa's Robben Island prison, 03 Dec 2009
Preparations for the first football (soccer) World Cup to be held on the African continent are in full swing in South Africa.
Billions of dollars have been invested, several new stadiums have been built and the pride and excitement seem to be overflowing.
At first sight, this would seem to be a very positive development, but there are some nasty, dark secrets, not generally reported by the South African media and government that cast a doubt whether the country truly deserves to be awarded the event.
FIFA has just held what was termed on its website as “… a very special meeting in Robben Island, Cape Town, the place where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in prison during the apartheid era in South Africa and where the inmates founded the Makana Football Association, recognised by FIFA as its first honorary member association in 2007. The meeting was opened with an emotive speech from Tokyo Sexwale, former prisoner in Robben Island and currently a member of FIFA’s Committee for Fair Play and Social Responsibility.”
One issue that hasn’t been addressed is the racially motivated black on white crime details and statistics, or the issue of security in South Africa, which has been described by Nick Buckles, the CEO of the world’s biggest security firm, Securicor, in this manner: “South Africa was the most dangerous country in the world to work in – ahead of Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Pat Symcox, former South African cricketer has been quoted as saying: ”The government should deal with our crime situation. If they cannot, they should cancel the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Countries worldwide should call for the event to be taken away…”
For every 1,000 crimes reported in South Africa, only 430 criminals are arrested. Of these, only 77 are convicted and barely 8 of these are sentenced to two or more years of imprisonment.
There are no official figures but, since the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994, farmers’ organizations say 3,000 whites in rural areas have been killed. The independent South African Human Rights Commission, set up by Mandela’s government, says the number is 2,500.
A child bludgeoned to death, his parents murdered
What is even less known is the particular viciousness of such attacks, the hate, torture, rape disembowelments, multiple stabbings and the like.
Attackers seem to be so filled with hate that there have been documented cases of them finding only dogs in empty, white-owned farmhouses. The dogs have first been tortured with boiling water, before being soaked in gasoline and set on fire.
Men, women and children are often accorded a similar “treatment”, with a frequent and widespread addition of brutal rape, usually before death, sometimes even afterward.
This after all is a country where President Jacob Zuma, used as his election campaign song an old war chant from his days in the ANC’s military wing, Mshini wami -Bring me my machine-gun and where YouTube posts include footage of Nelson Mandela singing another song, Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer.
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe may be a pariah across the world but in South Africa he has long been given standing ovations and rapturous applause at ANC events. He can after all boast of long-standing “success” in ousting the white farmers, having them murdered and turning Zimbabwe into a basket case.
We wonder if FIFA has studied these issues sufficiently, before giving South Africa the 2010 World Cup, or whether political correctness has once again taken precedence over reality…
FIFA’s President Sepp Blatter states in his blog article entitled “Football has a socio-cultural dimension” that among other things:”… Another crucial area is the fight against racism. To my mind, fining the clubs ‘responsible’ does not work. They need to be docked points in the league and in European competitions and kicked out altogether if need be. Such punishment is actually envisaged in our Disciplinary Code and without it we cannot hope to eradicate this problem.
Additionally, the FIFA Confederations Cup in Africa has allowed us to identify the areas in which we need to make improvements, particularly in transport and accommodation…”
Mr. Blatter, there seems to be other issues at stake here, besides transport and accommodations.
Technorati Tags: Crime, fifa, murders, south africa, white farmers, world cup
It is not that we didn’t expect it. After all, evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson has said many a dumb thing in the past, but his latest opinion on the Haiti earthquake, simply goes way beyond any boundaries of civility, decency, taste and common sense.
There is no doubt that the award of the coveted and highly-respected Nobel Peace Prize for President Barack Obama took practically everyone by surprise.
