Race & representation in the meaning/s of the 2010 World Cup

Guy Berger, Journalism and Media Studies, September 10, 2010

A mega-mystery…the meaning of the 2010 World Cup

• Various people harnessed purpose to it. Eg.– Highway Africa 14th conference – World Journalism Education Congress– Poor People’s Cup – 1Goal campaign– Khulumani:http://www.redcardcampaign.wordpress.com

• What was the official South African purpose?

Dayan & Katz: Media Events (‘92)– “They hang a halo over the

television set and transform the viewing experience”

– Narratives of Contest, Conquest, Coronation

– They are about “symbolic engineering”

– They feature heroic figures “around whose initiatives the reintegration of society is proposed”

Dayan & Katz (SA and Africa?)• In a Media Event: “(S)ociety’s members are

as if reborn to a different world. Of course they remain just where they were, but the world has remodelled itself around them.

• “Transformative media events affect symbolic geography. Media events have the power to redefine the boundaries of societies”.

• Hmmm….

Coming up: Analogies & the Cup1. The soil2. Soil erosion3. Roots of a

totality4. Tilling the soil

anew5. Weeds,

flowers, or crops?

1. “First time on African soil” – anatomy of a Cup cliché

First time on African soil

• Soil as fertile land – the source of growth and life.

• The land – romanticism of rural life, Africa’s roots.

• The land as a birthright (vs colonial dispossession).

First time on African soil

• And the first kiss… after a long wait!

• Even “first time” – fully-fledged intercourse!

Indeed, culminating a love affair

• A background of FIFA’s bad history re: Africa.

• ‘Except’ for Sepp Blatter: “The FIFA World Cup in Africa is a love story – a love story between the African continent and myself which began when I was the technical director of FIFA.”

• “I’m very proud and very happy that this love story is coming to the 'wedding celebration‘”

Something seeded, being born• Thabo Mbeki in 2009: “May the reward

brought by the FIFA World Cup prove that the long wait for its arrival on African soil has been worth it”.

i.e. Sepp the Stork?

First time on African soil

• A sense of precedent-setting restoring of ‘title’ to indigenous peoples.

• Belated yet deserved acknowledging of the worth of a vast but hitherto neglected and exploited zone in the world.

• A sense of profound justice for the region’s value finally being recognised on a par with other “soils” of the world.

First time on African soil

• Blatter: “Africa has given so much to the world and to the world of football.”

• “When this country was awarded the World Cup, there was a lot of work to do. We had to convince people that one day we would give back something to Africa.”

• So pay-back time: Reconciling the world and Africa, settling outstanding balances…

• A world of harmony, without historical debts.

First time on (South) African soil

• Blatter: “When this country was awarded the World Cup, there was a lot of work to do. We had to convince people that one day we would give back something to Africa.”

• Conflation of SA-Africa (vs Germany-Europe?)• Imagine 2006 “European” soil !*&?)$&**• Deliberate construction was not (only) of a

“South African” but an “African” World Cup.

Expressing the equivalences

• South African government: “As the host … South Africa stands not as a country alone – but rather as a representative of Africa and as part of an African family of nations.”

• “From the beginning of the bid process South Africa committed that the 2010 World Cup would be an African World Cup. The bid book proclaimed: ‘Africa’s time has come, and South Africa is ready’.”

Intriguing intellectual work

Rhetoric serves various purposes, but…• What makes it possible to create this ideology of

“first time on African soil” around an international sports event in South Africa?

• Answer: 1. Widespread constructions of “Africa”, 2. Evolution of the image of South Africa, 3. Generalisations based upon ‘blackness’.

2. Imaging Africa

Character of the continent

What does “Africa” mean?

• Jungles and wildlife: Africa as the last place on earth where humanity’s pre-historical travails are still present in visible and violent form of predators killing other animals.

• The animal angle of Africa is often alluring, albeit scary….

Sanitised & fit for consumption

The Africans

• When “Africa” is used to designate primarily people, it (silently) dissolves the coincidence with a physical landmass, and refers instead to persons - usually south of the Sahara.

• Race is conceived as origin in turn signalled by skin-colour…

• The background to this is a global history of racism against people signified as “black”.

• + the idea of “noble” (good) “savages” (bad).

The Positive: We love Africa• = A notion of a people untouched by the West’s

individualistic atomisation and materialism.• A people who instead still retain elements of an

untarnished ubuntu character. • Africans are thus naïve and innocent, and

possessed of natural capacity for music and dance - or, in the case of football, an intrinsic racial affinity to play and watch the game.

• This picture, although insulting and racist, is nevertheless generally painted positively.

The Negative: ‘darkest’ Africa• Black Africans are seen as

adherents of primitive lifestyles and susceptible to supernatural beliefs rather than science and rationalism.

• Tribal identity, untamed emotions.• Specific assumptions about

blackness as amounting to rampant sexuality, aggression, incompet-ence, and corruption.

• Also a victim image of Africans – regarded as pitiable objects.

History and mythology

• Perspective of a homogenised Africa does not come from nowhere...

• It is related to degrees of shared history … and shared present.

• Hence resonance of “FIRST” “AFRICAN” “SOIL”• But its explanation is often a racial register

where “blackness” is treated not as a socio-historical construct, but an intrinsic cause …

• Race = explanatory agency for African reality.

Binary decoding of blackness

• For Afropessimists, race is responsible for the failures around Africa; Expect #fail for Cup

• For Afro-pride, “black is beautiful” (white is culpable). Expect #success for Cup

• = a highly simplistic binary that shares a common essentialist approach to skin-colour.

• It is a particular rendition of the noble savage stereotype…and the key to the rhetoric around the World Cup.

Question time

Pause a moment and think: – Whose soil(s) really? (Gender angle?)– How significant is this “first” time (for Fifa to make

money direct from this continent)?– Is South Africa really Africa? (Is Grahamstown, South Africa? Is Rhodes, Ght?).– Is blackness destiny? Or historical designation?– Can symbolic engineering drive real change? – Or does reality exist, after as before, outside the

head?

3. Re-symbolising South Africa

Roots of a relationship with Africa• The fusion between the (South

African) part and the (African) whole has a recent history…

• Apartheid = clear difference between “black Africa” & SA.

• Post-Apartheid: the “prodigal” returns… to head the household… and position itself as proud host of “the continent’s” World Cup…

SA’s place in the African mix

• By early 2010: SA was seen as not so different to the perceived wider African pattern of incompetent and authoritarian governance.

• Notions about the interconnection of country and continent are bound up with assumptions more related to race than geography.

• In this view: Intrinsic blackness prevails & presides over SA’s inevitable slide into darkness.

Reinforced by reading events…

Shadow of the old Africa on SA

• Demise of rhetoric around the African Renaissance, Nepad and the African Peer Review Mechanism, left a sense of defeatism and cynicism in its wake.

• No longer sheltered by an image of exceptionalism, by 2010 SA had become susceptible to being placed in the same basket of negative judgements about Africa.

• A blanket image of a uniformly troubled entity.

+ Cultural mythology at work

South Africa also fits the classic myth of a hopeful revolution that ends up reverting to type – with youthful dreams being replaced by adult disillusion.

The Cup: Can idealism be regained?

• Would a South African ‘bubble’ with the Cup remake its image – and that of the continent?

• And: MAKE IT INTO WHAT?

4. The gamble

Part and whole

• World Cup proponents sought very particular readings of the SA-Africa interconnections:

• Their aim: extant negatives of the overall continental branding should not predominate over national specificity.

• On the contrary: national success should work to improve the image of the continent as a whole.

• i.e. “Brand South Africa” should benefit “Brand Africa”.

Pushing the conflation

• However, the success of the part was (and is) also inter-dependent with the whole …

• SA as a stand-in symbol for the broader continent only ‘works’ inasmuch there is a reductionism:

i.e. One where Africa can be treated as a singular entity – i.e. a meaningful signifier.

• (Which is bound to be problematic …). • Yet…. That didn’t stop the African rhetoric

Accentuating the ‘African’ positives

• Essop Pahad: Cup is about “getting out from underneath the welter of negative press coverage our continent receives...

• “It is about informing the world that Africa has much to offer, that our people are ready to receive the world, ready to host those who come to the World Cup and that when they come they will receive a wonderfully unforgettable African experience”.

• An elision where [SA-Africa] = uniformly positive

Convergence/divergence challenge

• “South Africa is the stage, but the entire continent is the theatre.” - Phil Molefe, SABC

• But what happens in the theatre affects the stage• For example, the Cabinda attack during the

African Cup of Nations 2009.• Difficulty lies in the rhetorical claim that SA is

part of Africa, and yet also then seeking to distance the country from negatives elsewhere on the continent.

So, the link can work negatively

• Coverage of African negatives generates negative representations for SA …

• (Africa x -1) = (SA x -2)?AND, the other side of the coin is that:• Coverage of SA negatives can also reinforce

negatives of the Continent…• (SA x -1) = (Africa x -2)?

The negative SA images…

• German security expert said his country’s team should wear bullet-proof vests during their visit.

• UK tabloid The Star wrote: “England fans could be caught up in a machete race war at the World Cup in South Africa” in the wake of the murder of Eugene Terreblanche.

• UK tabloid The Sun warned its readers not to have casual sex while in South Africa, raising the spectre of HIV-infection.

Against these views:

FIFA’s Sepp Blatter presented a very different construction of what to expect in [SA-Africa]:

• Africa as a continent is unlike “boring, boring, boring” Zurich. “In Africa, you have not only rhythm, but you also have music, dance and, importantly, the ability to dream.”

• i.e. the Cup in South Africa would offer an African sensuality and idealism to humanity.

The super positives

• Peter Mutie: World Cup will highlight that Africans are vibrant, energetic, capable, warm…

• Kgalema Motlanthe, at the time South African president, said in 2009: “The true legacy of Cup will be showcasing South African and African hospitality and humanity – to change, once and for all, perceptions of our country and our continent among the peoples of the world.”

Even an image of ‘African’ excellence

Noble or Savage: rival symbols?

• Mutie and Motlanthe express the “noble” part of the couplet; likewise Blatter expresses an envy for a people presumed to be uninhibited and with pre-modern, child-like qualities…

• The bullet-proof vest, machetes and Aids stories underscore the “savagery” dimension: the threat of warlike people in a place that is dark, unpredictable and dangerous.

Fork in road meant just 2 choices: Before the Cup, the

stereotypes signified [SA-Africa] and thence “blackness” as either:

• Risky, dangerous, incompetent, backward … or

• Filled with warmth, exoticism, ubuntu-ism, and rhythm.

Temporary triumph: symbolic progress!

Outcome: the stereotypes signified [SA-Africa] and thence “blackness” as :

• Risky, incompetent, backward, on the one hand… or

• Filled with warmth, exoticism, ubuntu-ism, and rhythm.

Conclusion

Ultimately a false flower• Nobility-savagery aspects go hand-in-hand.• Their binary character means this logic: if one side

of the stereotype does not work in the medium-term, then the other kicks in. Nasty replaces Nice.

• That amounts to an echo-chamber in which there is no space to begin to recognise the convoluted and contradictory realities.

• Each stereotype relies on reductionist readings of what blackness means… + they obscure the role of factors outside race (eg. cultures, genders, classes)

Summing up so far

1. Rhetoric around the soil and its promise.2. Context of erosion of SA’s reputation…3. And soiled image of [SA-Africa]4. The Cup as an attempt at tilling the soil…

So what?• We avoided weeds; yet false flowers will fade. • Will the event ultimately generate new crops?• Incl. better representations of part & whole?

Getting control of the ball

Beyond rhetoric…

• Can we reconstruct the meaning of the Cup as a reality that is both contradictory AND also more complicated than a simple mix of reified “positive” or “negative” blackness?

• And not just add Sandton and world-class Stadia alongside blackness stereotypes…

• Can we capture both the differences and commonalities within SA, and within Africa?

• Can we craft an idealism/ideology that’s closer to reality and hence more able to change it?

Where to?

• The challenge is for discourse and reportage to get beyond 2010’s obvious symbolic meanings.

• And to show more clearly the range of realities around this mega-event and its aftermath.

• Certainly not revert to a “back-to-type” analyses of [SA-Africa] blackness...

• Let’s try to change reality to be far better than the (false) flower symbolism.

• And fight against “back to SA business as usual” which undermines even that symbolic change…

http://guyberger.ru.ac.za/2010.pptx

Most photos from www.roadto2010.com