Back in Cape Town, I find the city as I remember it: gorgeous and frustrating, a glittering center and quaint suburbs hugging Table Mountain and uneasily overlooking the expanse called the Cape Flats, where I grew up among the city’s black poor and working class.
Yes, a graceful new stadium downtown greets soccer fans. And in a city where most soccer fans are black, and the downtown is still very much the province of whites and tourists, that’s something. But the World Cup, held in nine South African cities in June, is definitely over.
The expectations — and the fears — were huge: boosters saw the World Cup as South Africa’s entree to the developed world and to economic growth, while naysayers fretted that the tournament should be moved to Australia, that 40,000 prostitutes would flood the country, and that fans would be gunned down in daylight.
Nothing so remarkable happened, for good or bad. Yes, tourism may have blunted some effects of the global downturn, but not a lot. Yes, there was crime, but as the British newspaper The Guardian put it: “No one died. No one was stabbed, no one was kidnapped and no one took a wrong turn into the clutches of a gang of garrotters.”
In the end, though, soccer is about the beautiful game, a glorious moment. And we had ours.
I brought my American-born 4-year-old, Rosa, to experience South Africa’s moment, and wasn’t disappointed. Astonishingly, mixed crowds walked central Cape Town’s streets after dark and squeezed on to the (much improved, for the occasion) trains and buses. This is unheard of in a place where crime, or the fear of crime, conspires with an urban geography shaped by apartheid to ensure that public spaces are scarce, often empty and mostly segregated.
On opening day, South Africa scored the most spectacular goal of the tournament. And Ghana’s improbable march to the quaterfinals prompted a country still vulnerable to xenophobic violence to unite behind the Black Stars. At fan parks, Rosa, decked out in the colors of our flag, proudly announced in her American accent that she was “from South Africa.”
Today, the inescapable, droning vuvuzelas have been put away, South African soccer is as badly organized as ever, plans to improve public transport are in limbo again and fans have turned their attention to rugby and cricket, sports that our teams have a better chance of dominating.
But it is a testament to the hosts that Rosa still insists South Africa won the World Cup — not Spain.
Sean Jacobs, assistant professor of international affairs at the New School in Manhattan and founder of the blog Africa is a Country.