2010 World Cup and Schadenfreude

Alan Paton wrote about his native South Africa with a  combination of hope and despair, a wistfulness for the beauty it could be, juxtaposed with the ugly realities that could not be ignored. No two book titles are more illustrative than Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful and Cry, The Beloved Country , in expressing the zeitgeist of a nation weary from the tyranny of expectations – expectations of a future of racial tolerance, of equality before the law, of the simple dream of a better life; and wary of the disappointment and heartbreak of promises crushed and broken upon the wheel of reality.

So when a truly democratic South Africa appeared to emerge in 1994, 6 years after Paton’s death, the euphoria that greeted the birth of the Rainbow nation was tempered by a cynicism born of an intimate knowledge of the failings of humanity.

14 years later, the pessimism of the minority has become the reality of the majority. The country’s infrastructure appears to be in a state of imminent collapse, the best (or worst) example of which is the regularity of rolling blackouts, euphemistically called “load shedding”. The general populace has become impatient for the improvement in living standards promised to them by the ANC government, and many millions of people remain mired in poverty with no access to health care, education or even basics like electricity and running water.  Crime is rampant and has affected much needed foreign investment.  It was perhaps unrealistic to expect that centuries of deprivation could be ameliorated in years, or decades, or even within a single generation, but so much hope was invested in the dream of a new beginning, that anything short of Utopia was bound to cause bitterness and second guessing. The new government did not help its cause by turning a blind eye to, if not actively abetting cronyism and corruption, and angering it’s constituency with conspicuous consumption, all the while failing to provide for the basic needs of its people.The anger and frustration of the people has now found an outlet in the vilification of immigrants who are themselves refugees from broken societies.

Which brings us to the 2010 Soccer World Cup, which, when it was awarded to South Africa, set off a delirious celebration in keeping with the historic significance of the first world cup being awarded to an African nation. Some within the country, however, and significantly more expatriates outside, heard the distant knells of doom, wondering aloud if the country could pull it off.  The country was divided along racial lines with most blacks fervently optimistic about the possibilities and most whites drearily pessimistic that it could be done. This disenchantment seems to be greatest amongst emigrants, who are overwhelmingly white and who are principally economic rather than political refugees.  It is difficult not to discern, in this latter group, an element of schadenfreude, that malicious glee in the misfortunes of others, which colors many of the comments of “ex” South Africans. On the one hand, expats still refer wistfully to the “good old days” and regard South Africa as “home”, yet on the other, constantly search for rationalization for having left in the first place, desperate to avoid the taint of having participated in the “chicken run”.

If FIFA decides that South Africa is not up to hosting this important quadrennial event, it may have to implement its Plan B, which is to move the event to another country, one more able to take on this massive task.  There is precedent for this – in 1986, FIFA replaced Colombia with Mexico as World Cup host, albeit at Colombia’s own request. Such a move in 2010 would no doubt be greeted with hoots of derision and a chorus of “I told you so’s” from the expat commmunity, who would add this latest setback to their growing list of justifications for having left.

It has been my experience that, on the whole, the attitudes of those who emigrate tend to become ossified in the era during which they leave, rather like 40 or 50 or 60 year old women who still wear their makeup or have their hair done like they did in their twenties. Unwilling to give credit for the real changes that have taken place, or  unable to move on from the bitterness that drove them to move away, they sit in the catbird seats of privilege and pass comment on the troubles they have left behind, all the while whispering thankfully “There but for the grace of God…”

As an expatriate myself, I can understand the impulse to denigrate what we have left behind, and to rejoice in each disaster that makes our own decision to move seem that much more prescient and wise, but it makes it no less despicable to openly or even secretly wish for the failure of an event such as the World Cup, as if our redemption is possible only through the ruin of those we have left behind.