Counting Down for the World Cup

The McDonald's in town has a huge screen on the wall that is counting down for the FIFA World Cup 2010. There are 116 days until the kick-off. As we were on our way to Durban yesterday, the World Cup was the main topic of our conversation and Janet, who is a 22-year-old South African, brought up some good points.

At first glance, hosting the World Cup is exciting and it brings a lot of attention to the country, but there are some underlying problems that most people don't notice. A lot of stadiums are needed to host this event (just like the stadium in Durban that we saw yesterday) and those stadiums take up electricity. South Africa has been known as a country that doesn't have enough electricity and they often have electricity blocks in which certain cities go without power for a couple of hours in the day in order to conserve energy.

The government in South Africa has decided to make prostitution legal this summer because of the event. Most of the citizens, including those employed by prostitution, believe that this is a terrible mistake. There have been so many campaigns to fight HIV/AIDS and to try to encourage people to stick with one partner and to be safe because South Africa is already one of the countries with the highest percentage of people infected with HIV/AIDS. Can you imagine what legalized prostitution is going to do to those numbers?

Taxis and public transportation in South Africa are dangerous because so many people get robbed and because so many taxis get into car accidents. There are no seat belts, no safe rules, and the criminals target tourists and openly discriminate against them. Yesterday Janet asked, "how are tourists supposed to get around?" and while we were entering the freeway I realized what she meant. The streets of Durban are crowded enough as it is, accidents are common, and the taxi drivers don't care about traffic laws. I guess I should fully explain what a taxi is because it's not the yellow cab we think about in the United States. Taxis here look kind of like vans. It's similar to the Volkswagen van that's associated with hippies. They're very crowded and don't have seat belts. To call a taxi, you don't just put your hand in the air, you have to make a specific hand signal for the specific direction you are going towards. There's a signal for downtown, a signal for local, a signal for Joburg (Johannesburg), and so on.

Janet's opinion is that the country isn't ready to host the World Cup. There's been a lot of construction for it, but she says a lot of locals are worried about the negative effects it can have.

Thinking like any Westerner, I offered my opinion that tourism could bring a lot of money to help the economy and that awareness could also be helpful. If people see South Africa for what it is, that would put pressure on the government to fix things. Janet mentioned that the big businesses and politicians are happy for it, but the people of South Africa haven't had a say in the matter and are worried about it. It's still exciting to host the World Cup and people are still happy to see South Africa take on such a role in the world, but only time will tell if it is a good thing or not. It's crazy to think that something as simple as a sport can have such a big impact on society and throughout the world.