Joy for South Africa...and for Real Africa 

14 May 04

It was better not to listen to the final decision, since disappointment would have sent the adrenalin so high. But when it finally came from the World Cup committee it was a moment of total joy for even those Africans with no great interest in sports to share.

It may have seemed so self-evident, since South Africa lost out to Germany the last time by only one controversial vote in hosting the next Olympics. But in today’s world of the almighty dollar and wheeling and dealing, this did not mean South Africa was the de facto beneficiary of hosting a global event with so many huge economic and political linkages. True, the Olympics Committee said it was Africa’s term. But Arab-Africa is also Africa when it suits them.

This decision in favour of Africa, real Africa, is a momentous one. There was the rare Nelson Mandela, and the venerable Bishop Desmond Tutu, dancing, so happy that their country, and real Africa, will host the World Cup in 2010. Change of a system, and of the personalities running and commanding it, can create miracles. South Africa under apartheid would have never reached this stage of global respect and acceptance. Blacks and whites danced so joyfully as the decision was announce, trashing all racial barriers, artificial or real. This should be the real picture of real global humanity, but can it, in the rising racial divide and hatred?

Arab Africa threw in their bid for hosting the games. But realising what is happing in the Sudan, where black Africans are killed in their tens of thousands and driven from their homes by state-sponsored Arab militias, real Africa, Africa south of the Sahara, must be proud for this one opportunity of portraying the continent not merely  as one of aids, poverty and wars, but one built of the future, on par with what they called they civilised world. With this, South Africa’s success is a source of pride for all black people. It is a matter of image, something that runs this world in chaos.

There is no need for shyness in pointing out the deep gap between real Africa and Arab Africa, and the Sudan shows this as the world watches with another Rwanda unfolding. That Libya’s Ghaddafi was responsible for the destruction of Liberia, and of Sierra Leone, is now a fact forgotten on the global political plane on which the weak die and the strong keep going. But that South Africa triumphed over Morocco is a huge confidence-building step for abused and abandoned Black Africa, the so-called Dark Continent that remains at the bottom of the global economic ladder. Let South Africa prove that the Blackman can do it, and it will. Thank God for Africa, and let’s say, Amanla!

--Tom Kamara  
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