The South Africa World Cup: Invictus in Reverse
Johannesburg - You see it the moment you walk off the plane: a mammoth soccer ball hanging from the ceiling of Johannesburg International Airport festooned with yellow banners that read, "2010 Let's Go! WORLD CUP!" If you swivel your head, you see that every sponsor has joined the party - Coca Cola, Anheuser-Busch - all branded with the FIFA seal. It's when your head dips down that you see another, less sponsored, universe. Even inside this gleaming state-of-the-art airport, men ranging in age from 16-60 ask if they can shine your shoes, carry your bags, or even walk you to a cab. It's the informal economy fighting for breathing room amidst the smothering sponsorship. Welcome to South Africa, a remarkable place of jagged contrasts: rich and poor; black and white, immigrant and everyone else. On a normal week, it's the dispossessed and the self-possessed fighting for elbow room. But the 2010 World Cup, which starts in 90 days, has taken these contrasts and propelled them into conflict.
The present situation in South Africa could be called "Invictus in reverse." For those who haven't had the pleasure, the film Invictus is about the way Nelson Mandela used sport, particularly the near all-white sport of rugby to unite the country after the fall of apartheid. The coming World Cup has in contrast, provoked the camouflage of every conflict to present the image of a united nation to the world. As Danny Jordaan, the World Cup's lead South African organizer said, "People will see we are African. We are world-class." Note that the concern is about what the world sees not what South Africans see. What South Africans see, as one young man told me, is, "Football ..looting our country." The contrasts are becoming conflicts because the government at the behest of FIFA is determined to put on a good show, no matter the social cost.
There are the dispossessions as thousands have been forced from their homes into makeshift shantytowns, to both make way for stadiums and make sure that tourists don't have to see any depressing scenes of poverty. The United Nations even issued a complaint on behalf of the 20,000 people removed from the Joe Slovo settlement in Cape Town, called an "eyesore" by World Cup organizers.
There is the crackdown on people who make their living selling goods by the stadiums. Regina Twala who has been vending outside soccer matches for almost 40 years, has been told that she and others must be at least one kilometer from the stadiums at all times. She said to the Sunday Independent, "They say they do not want us here. They do not want us near the stadium and we have to close the whole place." In addition, FIFA has pushed the South African government to announce that they would arrest any vendors that sell products emblazoned with the words "World Cup" or even the date "2010." Samson, a trader in Durban, said to me, "This is the way we have always done business by the stadium. Who makes the laws now: FIFA?"
Samson was only referencing the threats toward vendors, but he could have been speaking about the series of laws South Africa has passed to prepare for the tournament. Declaring the World Cup a "protected event", the government, in line with FIFA requirements, has passed by-laws that "spell out where people may drive and park their cars, where they may and may not trade or advertise, and where they may walk their dogs." They've made clear that beggars or even those found of using foul language (assumedly off the field of play) could be subject to arrest.
Then there are the assassinations. In a story that has garnered international news but little buzz in the United States, two people on a list of 20, have been assassinated for "whistle-blowing" on suspected corruption in the construction of the $150 million Mbombela Stadium. The Sunday World newspaper attained the list, which included two journalists and numerous political leaders. There are accusations swirling that the list is linked to the ruling African National Congress, which the ANC has denied in bizarre terms, "The ANC...wants to reiterate its condemnation of any murder of any person no matter what the motive may be," said ANC spokesperson Paul Mbenyane. It's never a good sign when you have to make clear that you are anti-murder.
All of these steps- displacements, crackdowns on informal trade, even accusations of state-sponsored assassinations - have an echo for people from the days of apartheid. It's provoked a fierce, and wholly predictable resistance. In a normal month, South Africa has more protests per capita than any nation on earth. But when you factor in the World Cup crackdown, a simmering nation can explode. Over 70,000 workers have taken part in strikes connected to World Cup projects since the preparations have begun, with 26 strikes since 2007. On March 4th, more than 250 people, in a press conference featuring representatives from four provinces, threatened to protest the opening game of the Cup unless their various demands were met. These protests should not be taken lightly, A woman named Lebo said to me, "We have learned in South Africa that unless we burn tires, unless we fight police, unless we are willing to return violence on violence, we will never be heard," Patrick Bond from the Center Civil Society in Durban said to me that protests should be expected: "Anytime you have three billion people watching, that's called leverage." Indeed. There is a scene in Invictus where Freeman's Mandela says, "I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. I am the master of my fate." The people of South Africa still consider themselves unconquerable: whether they face apartheid, FIFA, or their current government. But FIFA insists with equal insistence that the World Cup will brook no dissent. In 90 days, we'll find out who masters the fate of this beloved country.
[Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming "Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love" (Scribner) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]
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By Olson, Gary at Mar 13, 2010 17:15 PM
And see "Cost of Stadium Reveals Tensions in South Africa by Barry Bearak, New York Times, 3/12/10. www.nytimes.com/2010/-3/13/world/article/13/stadium.html.
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Invictus: a pleasure or an insult?
By Degrees, Freedom at Mar 13, 2010 12:08 PM
It is interesting to note the extreme difference of opinion between you and John Pilger on the movie Invictus (I haven't seen it yet so I won't comment, instead I will just post Pilger's comments and go see it myself and make my own opinion):
My Oscar for the worst of the current nominees goes to Invictus, Clint Eastwood's unctuous insult to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Taken from a hagiography of Nelson Mandela by a British journalist, John Carlin, the film might have been a product of apartheid propaganda. In promoting the racist, thuggish rugby culture as a panacea of the "rainbow nation", Eastwood gives barely a hint that many black South Africans were deeply embarrassed and hurt by Mandela's embrace of the hated Springbok symbol of their suffering. He airbrushes white violence - but not black violence, which is ever present as a threat. As for the Boer racists, they have hearts of gold, because "we didn't really know". The subliminal theme is all too familiar: colonialism deserves forgiveness and accommodation, never justice.
At first I thought Invictus, could not be taken seriously, then I looked around the cinema at young people and others for whom the horrors of apartheid have no reference, and I understood the damage such a slick travesty does to our memory and its moral lessons. Imagine Eastwood making a happy-Sambo equivalent in the American Deep South. He would not dare.
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Re: Invictus: a pleasure or an insult?
By Shepherd, Lester at Mar 13, 2010 17:37 PM
I agree with your comments except the part about a Little Black Sambo flick. It would be varnished with falsehoods just like all other movies. It is a shameful travesty that this country refuses to make movies that depict actual reality like Zinn's books. Profit is the motive. Hollywood basks in their liberal elitism to give us crap for movies with no honest meaning. I will never watch Invictus because I already know it is bigoted. I am throughly ashamed by Morgan Freeman too. Why would he agree to this. I also remember, I think it was on 60 minutes, a story about one of Mandela's fellow prisoners who Mandela named to be in charge of an agency and ended up the most corrupt government official with 500 million dollars in his pocket and he never looked back. I also hear Mr Mandela's wife, who was picked apart by the press, has come out critically against Mandela himself. I want to hear more about this, if it is true. Same old. Same old. Elites trashing poor, stupid individuals with absolutely no personal responsibility at all. I wish there really was a God of judgement. Being an atheist though takes this delicious option away.
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Re: Invictus: "Hollywood Goes To Johannesburg"!
By Gool, Selim at Mar 13, 2010 20:00 PM
For the record: I did see the movie 'Invictus' directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Matt Damon (as Francois Pienaar) and Morgan Freeman (as Nelson Mandela), et alia, and I managed to read most of John Carlin's book on which the movie was based. Also, I am a 'black' South African-born scholar, a returned 'expatriot' and one-time anti-apartheid activist who was present in South Africa during those momentous years when the first 'Black President' was elected and clearly remember the euphoria of those times. Heady days, months and years pregant with hope, fear, exhillaration.
However, though John Pilger has written: "Why the Oscars are a Con" [Feb 11 ZNet] that: " ... Invictus (is) Clint Eastwood's unctuous insult to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa ... taken from a hagiography of Nelson Mandela by a British journalist, John Carlin, the film might have been a product of apartheid propaganda ... in promoting the racist, thuggish rugby culture as a panacea of the "rainbow nation", I would like to contextualize this further and go deeper. Let me also state here that I was moved and thorought enjoyed the film! Eastwood has made a winner and an enjoyable movie!
I have no doubt that his film will be see by millions of people, especially younger people, like many I saw in the movie-theater that evening, together with two other 'veterans of the struggle'. And in our after-movie chit-chat, we agreed that despite our initial heistations and doubts, we thoroughly enjoyed the movie. But here comes my proviso: to those who have no prior knowledge of the "real" history of the anti-apartheid struggle, of its many facets, achievements and reverses, of the the inner-conflicts for power and control, this film does not repict "historial reality" and neatly sidesteps the many ackward and contentious political issues that bedeviled that era and continue to do so today. The focus of Invictus is on the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa and soon we have the Soccer 2010 there, so parallells will be inevitable. But times have changed in South Africa, many of the older actors have retired and the stage is held by new ones and the future is unknown.
My great fear is that, like with the "representation" of the anti-apartheid struggle itself, you are going to be "sold" the idea that it was 'Nelson the Messiah' who waved his Magic Merlin Wand, wore his Magic Rugby jersey nr 14, smiled his famous Madiba Smile and all was well therafter! And in THIS sence, both the book and the film is a Con, a false portrayal of a much more complex (and very deceptive) social-political reality that is, and will be, contested by many. I will come back to this later.
As I read the book by John Carlin and was immediately struck by the fact that this was not of the quality and essence of his 1980s 'on-the-spot' reporting as an investigative journalist for the British-based newspaper, The Independent, but seemed to be exactly its opposite, a "haigiography", or a "money-spinner" for a lucrative global market [is it that he has retired to a villa in Spain something to do with this?]. The style, the content and and presentaion was for me a 'made-to-order' product for a less-discerning market. And here lies one of the greatest paradoxes of the 'tranistion period' to majority-rule in South Africa and for those who 'depict' it in words and film: one had to be present in South Africa at that time, between 1989 to c. 2006, to experience the enormous optimism, share the hopes, the great empathy shown to the ANC, and at the same time, experience the great fear of an ever-present threat of a "counter-revolution", that a Third-Force" - who were active (especially in the Witatersrand/ Gauteng area and massacring almost at will) - would succeed in 'destabilizing' the Peace Process and eventual 'Majority Rule'. This was REAL! It could have happened. But it did NOT! Counter-factual historiography could thus have a field day!
And it is exactly here where 'Madiba', Nelson Mandela, according to the new accepted wisdom, stepped into the breach. At the 'symbolic level' and 'level of appearances', he rises to the occassion and, in true 'Hollywood-style', single-handedly comes up with the snappy catch-phrases and 'solutions' that heal the centuries-old breaches and prevents a 'race-war', more blood-letting and looming political deadlock. This is what the book and film depicts: a Heroic Figure rising above the conflicts-on-the ground (despite fiercely contested regional turfs between warlords in Natal, the massive workers' upsurges, the Soweto students' revolt of 1976 and trade union struggles that started in the early 1970s, the huge community struggles that had led to "township revolts- cum - uprisings" over community-control of resources in the 1980s and so on). Real history vanishes as hapless Clio, the Muse of History, is again shawn of her innocence and becomes a handmaiden of Hollywood.
It is not a matter of "visual and filmatic representation" only: these huge struggles and the mass dramatis personea recede to the background totally and to the fore emerges the single heroic figure, and as in Attenborough's 'Gandhi' or counless Hollywood-epics from Spartacus onwards, "The Saviour". And this is what is so deceptive in the "Hollywood-representation" or fetishization of this theme: it is "surreal", made for the screen, a mass-product made for a "passive" audience to "consume", for reviewers and critics to acclaim, disaggree on or dismiss, a "cultural commodity".
And thus it is a paradox which requires further problematization: for me, the real focus of the book and film was a small window-of-opportunity, a brief, frozen moment-in-time and an almost "out-of-context" historical moment that makes John Carlin's book and Clint Eastwood's film "marketable" for a mass audience. The world of film and cinema resounds with such "frozen moments in time", Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" being one of the best known. Some critics would regard these as "cinematic manipulations" and emotive pulling-at-the-heart-strings: as we are "drawn-into" the action on the screen, we need to be 'entertained' by the telling of the story or narrative, the casts' role interpretation, an appreciation of the brilliance of the director and his crew, the visual drama.
Now, with historical hindsight, we know that the "behind the scenes" furious negotiating, the wheeling-and-dealing-, the "real stuff" of the political process that was being hammered out - BUT IN SECRET, WITHOUT ANY POPULAR MANDATE, AND WITHOUT ANY FORM OF DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY! By focussing on the Big Man, the role of the Individual-in-History, the wider script, the bigger picture and the secret machinations and dirty political horse-trading is forgotten.
In fact, in today's context, Winnie Mandela, has again grabbed the headlines by describing these 'secret deals' as a 'betrayal (The London Evening Standard, 08.03.10): and by uttering in public what many South Africans have long been thinking: " ... Mandela is now a corporate foundation. He is wheeled out globally to collect the money and he is content doing that. The ANC have effectively sidelined him but they keep him as a figurehead for the sake of appearance" [she has now subsequently denied this though!]. But in essence what she says is true: the ANC today is a puppet of the corporate world, domestically and internationally. It operated Goon Squads and targeted dissidents and political opponants - that this has been going on in exile [in Angola and Tanzania in the 1980s and inside the country, the 1980s 'Black-on-Black' violence for decades] is not touched upon. The air-brushed "victorious liberatory struggle" of the ANC-publicity glossy mags is a fiction!
A new ANC-linked Black kleptocracy, or 'Black Moguls' of a rich oligarchy got 'thilthy-rich' and the masses of breadwinners, workers and wage-earners lost their incomes and employment as industrial jobs hemmoraged and were 'outsourced', moved to low-wage areas or out of the country or were closed down and no compensation was given. A familiar neo-liberal story, with the irony being is that it is a Black-run State that is on the receiving-end of Black community and workers' protests today: scenes in the townships today are similar to those of the militant 1980s, with permanent mini-uprisings against the lack of "service delievery", basic public infrastructural investments, roads, water, health, schools etc. Statistics tell of the 'widening gap' between the rich and poor, which after 15-17 years of ANC-government is a frightful indictment of their policies !
In three months time we will be witness to the Soccer 2010 World Cup Games to be held in South Africa. Dave Zirin's article, above, puts this in perspective: " ... (the) displacements, crackdowns on informal trade, even accusations of state-sponsored assassinations - have an echo for people from the days of apartheid. It's provoked a fierce, and wholly predictable resistance ... Over 70,000 workers have taken part in strikes connected to World Cup projects since the preparations have begun, with 26 strikes since 2007. On March 4th, more than 250 people, in a press conference featuring representatives from four provinces, threatened to protest the opening game of the Cup unless their various demands were met. These protests should not be taken lightly ...". Yes, exactly and visit the website of the Ant-Eviction Campaign [http://antieviction.org.za/, or http://www.abahlali.org/] for more details of recent community struggles and the vulture State in trying to "hide the evidence" of its own complicity in the dispossession, robbing and forced-removals of communities.
In conclusion, I would urge readers and viewers of the film with the above provisos, as I really DID enjoy the film as "entertainment": the accents, the dialogue and the settings are "authentique" (in this I give kudos to Eastwood and his South African advisors and script-writers) BUT with the proviso that both the film and the book, however well-written or acted, depicts a South Africa that is was ABSTRACTION, a one-off event that was "stage-managed" and skillfully scripted, rehearsed and now filmed for mass-consumption: BUT this is NOT the real South Africa that will meet you as you step off the place at any of the new international refurbished air-ports, as you get travel on the magnificent autobahns (a cautionary note, South African drivers tend to take their, and thus your lives, into their own hands) and the magnificent natural splendours of the local fauna and flora.
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