Will the World Cup actually do very much for South Africa’s economy? Even the temporary boost to the economy from additional visitors may be illusory. There are reports that the number of visitors is well down on those expected, but let’s take the original foirecast of 373,000 visitors staying an averae 8 days.
Will the World Cup actually do very much for South Africa’s economy? Even the temporary boost to the economy from additional visitors may be illusory. There are reports that the number of visitors is well down on those expected, but let’s take the original foirecast of 373,000 visitors staying an averae 8 days.
In fact in an average month South Africa gets about 830,000 visitors any way. An event like the World Cup could actually reduce arrivals as business people and even tourists stay away. They assume that there will be too much disruption and that prices will be higher, which is certainly the case in South Africa at the moment. Perhaps as many as 50,000 visitors will stay away, so if numbers are 150,000 down on original estimates, the net gain could be much smaller than anticipated.
40 per cent of the population still lives on less than $2 a day (which is the subsidy that a dairy cow receives under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy accotrding to Oxfam). Some of these poor people are suffering as a result of the World Cup. In Durban some 5,000 subsistence fishermen were affected by a decision to exclude them from a pier and nearby areas where they have made their liveliihoods for more than two decades after they won the right to do so a quarter of a century ago as the result of an anti-apartheid campaign. A local authority member reportedly told them they were too dirty to fish there.
The Economist pulled no punches in an editorial which rained on South Africa’s parade. It listed the country’s structural problems as including ‘rampant corruption and patronage throughout the public sector; the world’s highest unemployment rate, with more than one in three out of work; one in eight of the population affected with HIV/AIDS; public hospitals described as ‘death traps’ by their own health minister; 80 per cent of schools deemed dysfunctional; terrible drug and alcohol abuse; crumbling infrastructure; lethal roads.’
Of course,. much of this is about politics and prestige. South Africa is a member of the G-20 grouping of top nations, the only one in Africa and they want to persuade the world that their hopeful story is not over. Unfortunately, the relatively poor performance of the national team has been a blow to morale. The vuvuzwelas have become a focus of controversy. However, the tournament has not encountered the major organisational problems that were forecast, although the arrival of an English fan in the team’s dressing room giving it large does raise questions about security.