Can Europe see beyond its own nose? We fear not. Can Germany conceive of interests more important than its own greedy aggrandizement? It seems not.
Is the rich north able to grasp the paradox that, by sharing things around a little, it may enrich not merely the rest of the world but, also, itself? Evidently not.
We ask these questions – and answer them thus – in anguish following the decision on Thursday by Fifa, football’s governing body, to award the 2006 World Cup, again, to Germany. This was Fifa’s decision notwithstanding the fact that South Africa – on behalf of Africa, a continent which has never hosted the event – had, in the judgement of Fifa’s own officials, mounted a bid for the event in every respect, technical and otherwise, at least as good as Germany’s.
This was the decision despite the fact that Europe has hosted the event no less than nine times.
Fifa’s decision – based on solidarity among Europe’s eight votes on Fifa’s top council, and flying in the face of the merits of the argument – is a disgrace, a discredit to Europe and very, very bad news for the game of football.
Football is not merely “the beautiful game”; it is the people’s game, the global game.
The millions of people, young and old, in African townships and on African savannah whose passion for the game probably exceeds even that in South America are, apparently, not worthy of Fifa’s consideration.
These African millions would have endorsed the view of Bill Shankly, the famous manager of Liverpool in its heyday, who once remarked: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death … I can assure them it is much more serious than that.”
That their passion, commitment and what they had to offer in South Africa’s bid have been spurned is a deep disappointment to people in Africa and, we are sure, to millions more people across the world.
The legacy of this decision will resonate far more widely than the game of football alone for many years to come. For it indicates a rather limited collective European mind – unimaginative, bereft of generosity and redolent with racism.
Of all countries in Europe, Germany, with its most unfortunate past, should have been capable of understanding that the importance to South Africa of hosting the 2006 World Cup went beyond football alone.
Germany could have been expected to understand that it would have advanced South Africa’s attempts to take forward nation-building at home and to integrate itself further into the international community of nations.
Germany could have withdrawn, magnanimously, having secured undertakings from South Africa for its backing in future bids – as Brazil did.
But, no, such a simple, generous gesture was evidently too much to ask of the German footballing authorities and, we should note, also of its Chancellor Gerhard Schroder – a man who has recently taken to professing to care about the development of the African continent.
Fifa will need to look carefully into how it came about that one Charles Dempsey, the Fifa delegate from Oceania, abstained from voting in the final round on Thursday, so avoiding the dead heat which would have resulted in Fifa president Sepp Blatter tendering his casting vote (as he had publicly undertaken to do) in favour of South Africa’s bid.
We would like to think that Dempsey was not the target or recipient of any improper inducements. But we cannot, in truth, claim to be confident of that.
There is a grubby appearance to the voting process, and Fifa will have to reassure the footballing world as well as the rest of us that we can have confidence in it. It can only do so by means of a thorough investigation of Dempsey’s role – and, we would suggest, his financial circumstances in the years ahead.
In contrast, we pay tribute to Danny Jordaan, who worked tirelessly to sell South Africa’s bid to Fifa, and his supporters, among them the ever-sunny Ngconde Balfour, Minister of Sport. They took on a massive task and did it magnicificently. They did not lose; they were cheated by a mixture of greed, prejudice and myopia.
Take a bow, chaps. You did us proud, and we are proud of you. Take a well-earned rest – and then turn to the next task at hand.
The rest of us, too, must now pick ourselves up, let this disappointment go, and move on.
We have come a long, long way since we turned back from the abyss in 1990. And almost every single metre of the journey we have travelled since then has been in the right direction. We tend too often, in the heat and accumulated irritation of the arguments we have among ourselves, to forget the extent of that achievement.
It would have been affirming to have the outside world acknowledge that by giving us the World Cup. Too bad they did not.
We will now affirm our progress ourselves, and march on.
We are a nation capable of magic. We have shown that since 1990.
Let us now set about putting our own pot of gold at the end of our rainbow. By building a better life for all.