Poor Peoples World Cup draws attention to lack of benefits from tournament

The FIFA Soccer World Cup is approaching an end in South Africa, with the finals scheduled for next weekend. As the games come to a close, many are questioning the benefits organizers of the mega-tournament promised to bring to the country – where many live in poverty and lack access to housing, electricity, and water. Activists and athletes are highlighting the plight of the poor in a parallel tournament called the Poor People’s World Cup. Some 36 teams from 40 Cape Town communities are competing. FSRN’s Davison Makanga attended one of the games and files this report:

TRANSCRIPT:

TRINAN DAVIDS: I love soccer. It's like…it’s like… it’s like me, man!

Trinan Davids can’t stop talking about his passion for soccer, when I ask him why he likes the game.

Known to his peers as Kaka, after the Brazilian soccer star, the 18-year-old impressively juggles the soccer ball. For now though, his skill counts for little.

Davids and some 400 players are participating in the Poor People’s World Cup at the periphery of Cape Town’s Athlone Stadium. Many of these athletes say playing for professional teams is a far-fetched dream. They feel unrecognized, as neither high-ranking officials from FIFA nor local leaders have accepted their invitations to attend the alternative games:

CLINTON: What we want is the mayor to come out with a few coaches, come scout for players. Even if they get one player, they can say they did a good thing helping one player at least. We don’t want them to scout everyone, at least one from the group.

Davids’ teammate Clinton Peterson expresses frustration at the lack of recognition by leaders. He says his goal of playing for Liverpool FC might remain just a dream.

However, it’s the lack of basic needs such as shelter and water that frustrates nineteen-year-old Peterson the most:

PETERSON: I stay in Delft, I don’t even have a big house. If I turn, my head knocks against the wall, you see, because I don’t have a house. I live in a small hookie.

By a small hookie, Peterson refers to the small wooden shack he shares with three members of his family in Cape Town’s crime ridden area of Delft.

PETERSON: The government can look after us the way they are looking after the foreigners. Even the crime, as well. They hired a lot of policemen just for the foreigners. Why can't they do that for our safety, the citizens of South Africa? That’s why we must work together and go to the government and tell them- just build bigger houses for us, not even big houses, just one room or two rooms. You see, we don’t want a lot of money, just a few houses.

For some spectators, attending this tournament is a way of temporarily escaping tough living conditions. Bantu Dlincane is among some 200 fans attending the Poor People’s World Cup. The self-trained electrician lives in an informal settlement ironically called Sweethome:

DLINCANE: I just want a job, only because now I’m not working.

This is Joan Dexter, a 54 year-old taking care of five people. She is here selling sweets to make a little money. But she says she could have made better profits had she been selling her goods at the FIFA World Cup stadiums. Like many informal vendors, Dexter was not allowed to do business at the stadiums during the World Cup, due to FIFA by-laws that give preference to official sponsors.

DEXTER:  Really sad for me, really. I mean people struggle and people want to put something on the table. They can sell nothing here- no stalls, nothing going on here.

The general sentiment by the poor here is probably summed up by the aspiring soccer star Davids, who challenges the government to do what he would do if he secures a job in professional leagues:

DAVIDS:  Football is my life. If I go [professional leagues] my friend, I’ll be a great star and I’ll give to the people. People don’t have money, don’t have houses, and if I have money I’ll develop.

Davison Makanga, FSRN, Cape Town.

Photo: World Cup Soccer player, Johannesburg

Photo by: jasonwhat