One of the most touching things I have seen in Jo’burg in a long time was, a few days back, a ragamuffin man pulling a cart of scraps of old metal, making his way to the recycling depot. On the top of the cart he flew a South African flag.
Our cars fly the flag in an unprecedented outpouring of national pride. More and more people wear Bafana Bafana colours.
But a legitimate question is: How does the World Cup, with its multibillion-rand cost, benefit poor South Africans such as this rag-and-bone man?
There are already voices in the twittersphere and elsewhere bemoaning the cost of the event.
Author Rian Malan is one, writing in an otherwise beautiful piece, published by the Guardian in the United Kingdom, that it will take generations to pay off the billions of debt incurred to host the World Cup.
This is a common refrain about these events. They are seen as a waste of money that should rather be put into water, housing, education and hospitals.
The World Cup is probably a once-in-a-generation event for South Africa. It is a massive one-off celebration when we get to host one of the world’s great parties.
The nearest equivalent for a household would be a wedding. I have asked colleagues what they think households spend on a wedding.
The consensus seems to be between 10% and 15% of annual income — between R60 000 and R90 000, all things considered, for a family earning R50 000 a month.
How much is South Africa spending on the World Cup? We are pumping money into our transport infrastructure but since this is in use every day, it can hardly be put on this tab.
The stadiums cost R33-billion, just 1,6% of our GDP of R2-trillion. No one is suggesting that we should spend 10% of our GDP on this party, but this does give some perspective.
Of the R33-billion national government has stumped up R11-billion, finding this money not through debt but through the normal budgetary process.
This is like a family financing the wedding out of its monthly cash flows rather than taking out an extra mortgage on the house to pay for the big bash.
But we are still running a budget deficit. Until recently this was projected to be 8% of GDP, but the latest projection is that it will fall to 4,1% in the next three years; relatively modest in a world where deficit financing is suddenly seriously out of fashion.
But can the municipalities afford it? A ratings anaylst tells me that the increased expenditure for infrastructure, both World Cup and unrelated, has ramped up the country’s largest municipality, Joburg’s debt to income levels.
The analyst said that the current situation was sustainable from a ratings point of view and that he expected the ratio to improve as the present infrastructure cycle came to an end.
The stadiums are owned by the municipalities. Their running costs range from R2.4million a year (Ellis Park) to R18-million (Soccer City), according to the Financial Mail in a detailed report.
How well the municipalities do with the stadiums will vary on a range of factors such as whether they will host a major rugby or soccer team and entertainment events.
But if we have a spare R33-billion, should we rather put the money into a greater public good than a soccer spectacle?
We already spend big on social services and infrastructure, running, for instance, what has been called the largest social welfare system in the world. But sadly, we underperform in the bang we get from each buck spent because government often does notoriously badly in delivery.
A lesson from the World Cup is that with sufficient political and private can-do, we can work wonders. On time.
Surely, what we have done with football we can do with water and other pressing imperatives?
Anger about the financing of the stadiums is misplaced. This is not to say that hosting the World Cup is all happiness and sunlight. For one thing, Fifa treats its host countries as lackeys rather than as true joint-venture partners.
For another, the jury is still out on who has profited and how from the building of the stadiums. There has been so much corruption in the corridors of power of late that you have to suspect that this has reached the stadium contracts too.
But this rage can come later. For now I will join the man with the scrap cart and fly the flag.