Football, Security and Globalization: The World Cup and Development in Cape Town
BY TONY ROSHAN SAMARA
In June 2004 the Federation Internationale de Football Association(Fifa) announced that the 2010 World Cup would for the first time be hosted by an African nation, South Africa. This news was greeted with jubilation across the country. The sounds of cheering, car horns and the vuvuzela, the suddenly ubiquitous plastic South African trumpet, filled the streets of Cape Town. The announcement was interpreted by many South Africans, most prominently the media, political and economic elites, as yet another sign that South Africa had left its tragic past behind and was taking its rightful place in the global community as a well-integrated multi-racial democracy, a model of reconciliation, and as a guiding light for the African Renaissance. Globalization, it seemed, had finally delivered something to South Africa.
Two years on, however, the meaning of the World Cup coming to South Africa is increasingly contested by a civil society that has, for over a decade, been patiently awaiting and agitating for the undoing of apartheid’s unequal development of Black and White South Africa.1 Critics fear the event has further distorted national and local development priorities, diverting attention away from the needs of the people and absorbing energy and resources that should be directed towards the massive challenge of underdevelopment. The Cup has thus become the latest flashpoint for debate and struggle around the agenda for and direction of economic, social and political development of the country, including the governance of its urban centers.
While on the one hand this is a story very much unique to South Africa, it is at the same time a story about the ways that globalization shapes, and some would say limits, the choices left to nations of the global South and to its cities in particular in the 21st century. It is also a cautionary tale about globalization’s ability to generate and sometimes exacerbate social and political tensions at the local level, one often omitted in the larger celebratory narrative of the global village.
Although local dynamics will always interact with global and transnational dynamics to generate discrete phenomena and confound the forces of homogenization, the story of Cape Town is a story that, in certain broad outlines, will nonetheless be familiar to many urban communities around the globe, as neoliberalism further penetrates into the processes and institutions of governance across scales, from the international, to the national, to the local.
URBAN NEOLIBERALISM AND THE CITY STATE
Urban governance in the US underwent a significant shift in the 1960s and 70s, from urban Keynesianism to urban neoliberalism, a shift that has become embedded in global processes. The shift in orientation had three major influences on urban development. First, cities began to look to the quasi-public, non-governmental and private sectors for services that traditionally had been provided by local government, shifting its role from one of direct government to more dispersed urban governance. Secondly, city development was increasingly shaped by the desire to provide the kinds of opportunities that would attract middle class suburbanites (and their disposable income) back into the city, leading to the emergence of entertainment districts and even entertainment cities whose benefits for lower income urban residents are limited if they exist at all.
Finally, to achieve the first two goals, to attract investment and middle class consumers, cities needed to combat the perception that urban cores were dangerous places. As a result, efforts to reduce crime in the inner city became central to urban renewal policies, but in ways that critics charged employed racial profiling, increased repressiveness in communities of color and that sought to control and contain, rather than develop, those communities and populations perceived as the source of the threat.
Today cities are linked directly to the transnational as much as to the national. South African economist Patrick Bond has referred to the implementation of urban policies normally associated with transnational institutions of governance, such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, as structural adjustment at the scale of the municipality, whereby cities become both the site and the mechanism through which neoliberalism is implemented. Globalization, in this case, has greatly complicated the issues of governance and democracy, as local residents are often governed by “blended” local, national and transnational institutions, processes, and ideologies, with no easy or obvious points of leverage from which to exercise formal political power over those who shape the conditions of their daily lives.
Cape Town is in this process of structural adjustment and the resulting social and political conflicts between citizens and the state fill South African newspapers. The imminent arrival of the World Cup risks exacerbating these conflicts and consequently, contributing to unequal development in South Africa. In the absence of genuine development, the task of city elites will increasingly be the governance of this inequality and the disruptions it has and will continue to generate.
FOOTBALL STADIUMS AS DEVELOPMENT
The urban development package being rolled out across much of the globe is wrapped in the language of the “world class” city. The desire to make Cape Town into a world class city has been an explicit goal of city elites for years and the 2004 Cup announcement was held up as proof of their campaign’s success while simultaneously reinvigorating their efforts. The successful campaign to host the Cup represents a great victory in this effort but preparations for the event have generated substantial controversy. Among these was the highly unpopular, and now final, decision to locate the World Cup stadium at Green Point, deeply embedded within the city center.
Central to the objections were concerns over the cost of tearing down the existing stadium and building a new one, the environmental impact of the massive urban park to be built around the stadium, the meaning of locating this development in an area that is largely inaccessible to township residents. Many residents of Cape Town hoped the stadium would be built in Athlone, a working and middle class Colored community on the edge of the Cape Flats.
The constructing or upgrading of infrastructure and other necessary projects for events like the World Cup underpin claims made by urban elites for the developmental benefits of pursuing world city status. However, the stadium controversy suggests that development here is already exhibiting the characteristics of fortified enclaves rather than urban integration.
The reason for this is not difficult to grasp. Tourism and other culturally- based forms of development rely on the image of the city internationally, and South Africa continues to struggle with its reputation for high levels of crime, its poverty and inequality. Clearly, neither of these issues will be resolved by 2010. This leaves a fairly narrow range of choices for those planning for the Cup.
THE CRIME OF POVERTY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CRIMINALITY
The decision to locate the stadium in Green Point was influenced by concerns about image, with Fifa suggesting that international television audiences should not see the poverty surrounding Athlone. The South African government was heavily criticized for bowing to the wishes of football officials in Zurich. This case provides insight into key issues of governance and development under conditions of globalization and urban structural adjustment. The stadium controversy suggests a tendency for certain forms of development to position the poor, rather than poverty, as the problem.
The decision to not locate the stadium in Athlone was driven in part by the fact that the community struggles with crime and has become a center of the trade in methamphetamines. South African leaders hoped the stadium would spark development and help the community address these problems and related poverty. While evidence of this form of development contributing to genuine long term development is sparse, the decision to build the stadium in Green Point was seen by many township residents and leaders as a betrayal of the many promises repeatedly made to the city’s less affluent residents about the benefits of the Cup.
Ironically, the spatial geography of the city under apartheid serves as a convenient mechanism through which to guarantee a safe and secure World Cup, ensuring safe distances are maintained between international football tourists and the neighborhoods of the urban poor. In making use of apartheid’s separation of the townships of the Black poor from the city proper, and the allocation of resources in line with these partitions, the original divisions themselves are reproduced and reinforced.
Within the affluent core, a familiar security plan is in the offing as well. For years now Cape Town’s affluent downtown has been experimenting with the establishment of central improvement districts, the privatization or quasi-privatization of security in these districts, and the implementation and aggressive enforcement of quality of life by-laws. As is the case in many cities around the world, the city took its cue from the New York “miracle” and former mayor Rudy Giuliani is currently active as an advisor to the country on matters of urban security in the lead up to the World Cup.
His advice will be familiar to many: cities must be run like businesses. Repeating the mantra that security had to precede development, Giuliani observed that, “All eyes are on South Africa. So, you have to start with crime, and make it a safer place. If it is safe, then all of a sudden everything constructive falls in place — more jobs, more investors, bigger corporations moving in, a thriving tourism industry, and a booming economy.”
This approach to security has led to increased insecurity for others. The attempt to pass and aggressively enforce quality of life by-laws, a hallmark of the Giuliani “broken windows” brand, has led to charges that the city is anti-poor and seeks to criminalize .poor people of color in the city center. A controversy erupted a few years ago when the city attempted to pass a series of particularly severe by-laws. These include prohibitions in public places against begging, urinating, spitting, consuming or being under the influence of liquor or drugs, storing belongings, and washing, cleaning or drying any objects, including clothes. The primary targets of these laws have been Black African and Colored street children, refugee parking attendants (the Cape Town version of New Y ork’s squeegee men) and the homeless. In the meantime, national and international capital continues to pour into the city center while the townships remain as underdeveloped as ever.
The World Cup coming to Cape Town as an example of what globalization means for underdeveloped nations suggests that the impact of integration into the world system is fraught with risks for already vulnerable populations. It raises serious questions that demand answers: how should development be defined and by whom? What constitutes security? The answers to these questions, articulated so clearly by the African National Congress during the early days of South Africa’s transition, have lost their clarity under the pressures of globalization. It is vital that we are very careful when discussing what globalization actually means as in manifests in people’s daily lives. In Cape Town, and in reference to the World Cup, globalization means a specific form of governance that is implemented at the level of the city, though decisions may be made at much higher levels of abstraction from the local and in far away centers of power. It also means contestation about the definition of development, and asking whether the needs of township residents can be met by a distant football stadium. Finally, it means interrogating the discourse and practice of security in a highly divided and unequal city. Although it is unlikely the World Cup will contribute to the development of the townships or the security of its residents, by posing these questions to the institutions of governance residents of the Cape Town may find in the Cup an opportunity to once again assert their right to the city.
Tony Roshan Samara (tsamara@gmu.edu) is assistant professor in the department of Sociology & Anthropology (http://sociology.gmu.edu). This article was first published in print and citations have been removed due to space limitations, but are available from the author
- Racial categories in South Africa are, as elsewhere, complex and contested. The term Black is used here to refer to the entire non- White population, in keeping with the tradition of Black Consciousness in the country. In making further distinctions within this diverse population the categories used are those employed by the South African Census: Black African, Colored and Asian. [↩]
