Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

I believe many of history’s most dismal failures happened because something ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’. SA’s hosting the 2010 World Cup is starting to look like one of those.

A poll by African Response found that almost half of metropolitan adults would not be willing to fork out good money for World Cup match tickets. Apparently, tickets for South Africans will range from R136 per ticket to around R6 000 per ticket for a final match. If metropolitan fans won’t pay to watch, what are the chances that rural fans will have the wherewithal to attend the matches?

However, 88% said they would watch the matches on TV. Which I find optimistic, considering Eskom’s inability to power the nation’s TVs and the fact that – if we’re halfway through a migration to digital TV by then, as promised – there may be no plan in place yet for digital set-top boxes to allow people to watch the new, hi-tech broadcasts.

Strangely (to me, at least), the survey also found that most people are still positive about SA’s plan to host the event. In a country where people are being decimated by AIDS, criminals and drug abuse; where children are being educated in ramshackle boxes or under trees; and where emergency services don’t have the means to respond to calls for help, doesn’t it seem a tad frivolous to spend several billion rands on hosting a few soccer games instead of fixing real problems?

And once all the fun is over, will SA’s desperate masses be left with anything vaguely useful to them? I don’t think so. Unless we’re planning to house the homeless in the shiny new stadiums.

I think it amounts to throwing a lavish party for the next-door neighbours while our own children starve at home.

What's your opinion?