Africa Is a Country

The Day After

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Day After

By
Sean Jacobs

Locals after South Africa successfully hosted a global, mega-event: why can't it tackle its inequalities with the same energy and efficiency?

Image by Shine 2010, via Flickr CC.

The football World Cup, hosted by South Africa, is now over after a final match that rivals the 1990 World Cup final in Rome between Germany and Argentina for its negativity, ugliness, aimlessness and overzealous refereeing.  Andres Iniesta’s extra-time goal ensured the right result at least. Spain is a deserving champion.

We can all go back to our normal lives now.

But if, like me, you need more football related stuff to tide you over till August (when the major European domestic competitions resume as well as qualifications for continental competitions like the African Nations Cup), here are some good summer reading:

The journal “Social Text” has published a set of posts on the 2010 World Cup’s meaning and significance. They are by Jennifer Doyle, Nikhil Singh (who edited the posts), Andrew Ross, Patrick Bond and Eli Jelly-Schapiro, among others. There’s also a piece by myself, culled from this blog, about the repeat of widespread xenophobic attacks against black African migrants in South Africa.

The journalist Siddhartha Mitter, in a piece on the new music and culture portal OkayAfrica, asks whether this World Cup was really African.

Are the Netherlands’ football tactics – once copied by Spanish teams – been replaced by a style reflecting the rightwing turn in the country’s politics? The writer David Winner – remember, he wrote the book “The Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Beauty of Dutch Football” – thinks so in a piece in The Observer.

A piece on The Atlantic Monthly’s blog by Eve Fairbanks, an American journalist currently living in South Africa on a fellowship, writes about foreign (and local) journalists’ search for what they deem the “real South Africa.” Here’s an excerpt:

… It’s the first African World Cup, and we came here needing to see something, well, African. The images that came easily were all wrong. The stadiums were too shiny, the hotels too continental. An anxiety began to creep in that we weren’t getting the real story.

The South African journalist, Mark Gevisser, writing in The Guardian, gets delirious (who wouldn’t?) about how well South Africa handled its hosting duties, but then asks the obvious question:

… [I]f South Africa can deliver a global mega-event, why can’t it tackle its inequality with the same energy and efficiency.

Further Reading

After the uprising

Years into Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict, the rebellion faces internal fractures, waning support, and military pressure—raising the question of what future, if any, lies ahead for Ambazonian aspirations.

In search of Saadia

Who was Saadia, and why has she been forgotten? A search for one woman’s story opens up bigger questions about race, migration, belonging, and the gaps history leaves behind.

Binti, revisited

More than two decades after its release, Lady Jaydee’s debut album still resonates—offering a window into Tanzanian pop, gender politics, and the sound of a generation coming into its own.

The bones beneath our feet

A powerful new documentary follows Evelyn Wanjugu Kimathi’s personal and political journey to recover her father’s remains—and to reckon with Kenya’s unfinished struggle for land, justice, and historical memory.

What comes after liberation?

In this wide-ranging conversation, the freedom fighter and former Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs reflects on law, liberation, and the unfinished work of building a just South Africa.

The cost of care

In Africa’s migration economy, women’s labor fuels households abroad while their own needs are sidelined at home. What does freedom look like when care itself becomes a form of exile?

The memory keepers

A new documentary follows two women’s mission to decolonize Nairobi’s libraries, revealing how good intentions collide with bureaucracy, donor politics, and the ghosts of colonialism.

Making films against amnesia

The director of the Oscar-nominated film ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently.