Well isn't this just grand, 2010 is right on the horizon, the beginning of a new decade about to be capped by the World's greatest celebration of sport, and ugly hatred rears its head again. When the incumbent government of South Africa decided to deny the Visa of the Dalai Lama, they not only crushed the hopes of so many living within Tibet, who desperately wanted a world stage to voice their plight, but also cemented the will of communist China on a new continent. You heard me right, South Africa, which for centuries suffered from an apartheid system that made non-whites second class citizens, now appears to be on the verge of an invasion in political doctrine from the Great Red East.
South Africa, which is world famous for diamonds that are pulled from the earth only to leave pools of blood behind, has turned its back on one of the greatest spiritual leaders of our time in the name of commercial interest and for the sake of a partner that seeks to influence the most powerful nation on the most important continent in regards to future resources. While the U.S. pursues hopeless interests in a Middle East that will never accept us, let alone love us, China slowly but surely is buying power and friends on a continent that has vast untapped oil fields, undeveloped mines of precious metal, and enough instability and corruption running through its veins that its citizens can't or won't put up much of a fight.
What can be done about this situation, or is it just politics, and more likely business as usual? Desmond Tutu, ever the optimist in regards to human nature, could be considered the meter stick for what is going on in this country. "If His Holiness's visa is refused, then I won't take part in the coming 2010 World Cup-related peace conference. I will condemn [the] government's behaviour as disgraceful, in line with our country's abysmal record at the United Nations security council, a total betrayal of our struggle's history," he said. He is right, this is a slap in the face of all those, black and white, who died in a dream that started in Soweto in 1976. By abolishing one form of abuse for another, those living under the ANC-backed regime in South Africa are not truly free. To have a truly free society, one must have freedom of the mind, the ability to be exposed to different points of view, to feed off the life experiences of somebody that is so very much not you or what you are used to. When the black population of South Africa was given freedom, it shifted a large volume of wealth to a very small, elite minority of black millionaires, not really doing much to alleviate the rampant poverty that still remains in the country.
So the question that begs to be asked is whether this is a South African problem or an African problem. It's no longer a black or white problem, but now a red and green problem. Death and money are the issues that make South Africa, and the entire continent, a powder keg waiting to explode. Why is the world showcasing the most watched sporting event in a country that very clearly is the spearhead of hate. Hate for the whites, hate for the blacks, hate for the poor, hate for the rich...the answer is, of course, this giant pool of money that fluffs up our man-made and false economic system that teeters on the brink of annihilation, like some house of cards with the souls of men attached to them. In the future, the untapped resources of an abandoned world will be carved up by the power players in both east and west, and the 2010 world cup will be a celebration not of sport, but of commerce and excess, of fat cats and the dirty masses of helpless rats they feed on.
Reflecting the country's apartheid past, poverty was concentrated among blacks, particularly Africans. Sixty-one percent of Africans and 38 percent of mixed-race 'coloureds' were poor, compared with five percent of Indians and one percent of whites, according to the report.
So, what is the pulse of this country, a place where soccer can be played for millions of adoring fans in state of the art stadiums, but infants as young as five months have been raped (how is this physically possible, first of all, and secondly that may be the sickest person I've ever heard of >>>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1703595.stm).
It's a country that very obviously has immense disparities within it, perhaps more than any other country, and that's to be expected. When a white, christian, imperialist society decides to come ambling along the coast in warships, peppering the fishing villages with cannon fire and basically stomping a mudhole in a way of life that existed for thousands of years before, there is going to be tension.
Africa in general is going through some serious regression...case in point a "witchhunt" going on in Gambia, which is on the west coast and far, far away from South Africa. Point being stuff like this is going on:
Then, we can go to the shamocracy that is Zimbabwe and the blatant assassination of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's wife Susan in what was an attempt on his life. He, naturally, wanted to share power with incumbent "dick"tator Robert Mugabe in the ministries of importance, but we all know that a power sharing scheme will never work when one man is a politician and the other a thug.
Perhaps nothing screams in the face of moral responsibility than the current situation in Madagascar, which has experienced a change in power that the AU likens to a wholesale offering of power for money. Check out http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/03/thoughts-madagascars-coup-detat, for a first hand perspective of the debacle.
After so much ranting and raving, I suppose I come back to square one of this whole piece, which is to say I vehemently oppose the awarding of the world's premier sporting event to a country that bathes in despotism. At one time, sports and competition were meant to foster brotherhood and harmony, a place where we could all attempt to play on a level field and give it all we had. In the case of next years convoluted, corporately backed and disgustingly expensive display of power and money under the mask of unadulterated love of the game, I won't be there. In the cesspool of continued inequality that is South Africa, we cannot have a fair discourse on why we hate, we will all be too busy sitting next to each other under the guise of common interests and passions.
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