South Africa and South Africans have been exceptional in delivering a superb World Cup.

Once it ends however they need to continue such exceptionalism in some areas of life, primarily in their work habits, increasing productivity (even though World Cup month may have seen a drop in productivity), taking responsibility for things and be willing to be held accountable for the things they do and don't do. In the area of social relations, social cohesion and developing social capital, however, they may need to break old pre-World Cup habits and be a little less exceptional than has been their pretension, and be a little more common and empathetic to their fellow citizens.

So, what lessons can South Africans learn from the experience of the days immediately preceding the FIFA 2010 World Cup^TM? Increasingly - two key questions have emerged. The first is, what lessons are there for building on the togetherness (social relations, social cohesion and developing social capital) seen on the days before and at opening match as well as on the days that Bafana Bafana played?


The second, if somewhat misplaced question, is why has the energy and cohesion that delivered the World Cup on time, not been directed at South Africa's myriad other problems ranging from Aids, inequality and unemployment to poverty and service delivery?

The good news here is that South Africans are asking these questions. The bad news is that there are in fact no real spectacular lessons or answers, except quite obvious, simple and rudimentary ones.

All that things like the World Cup present, are opportunities, not really lessons.
Opportunities to do things that normally aren't done. The lesson, if there is one at all, is that South Africans need to interact with each other and others more frequently and more substantially. This interaction should serve as basis for knowing others rather than reinforcing stereotypes of "otherness". The taking responsibility, being accountable and committed, and listening to what others say - may lead to both better social relations and improved service delivery.

The 1995 Rugby World Cup and what happened or didn't happened after, is often used as a comparator to the soccer World Cup. This comparison is in the end, a false one. The sheer scale and magnitude of the two events are different. This is also why the camaraderie experienced then in 1996 was short lived and ephemeral, because the interaction and knowing of the "others" didn't continue beyond the event and that is why suspicions are, that once the soccer World Cup ends, South African's will go back to their separate laagers or kraals, for those without laagers.


Business will do what business does and the mass of ordinary South Africans in cities, towns, villages and squatter camps will no longer have the distraction of football and spectacle, nor the coercive impositions of FIFA via the repressive arm of the state, to keep them quiet. As it is, rumblings of negrophobic and xenophobic violence breaking out after the World Cup spectacle, are rife.

Socially we know each other slightly more than we did before 1994. The reality, though, is that South Africans don't really know each other, and often care not to. South Africans were forced not to know each other in the past. They were forced through the splendid isolation wrought by apartheid, not to know much beyond themselves. Many chose not to know even if they could. Many still choose not to know. Entrenched cleavages, marked as they are by colour and class, ethnicity, religion and nationality - by the co-existence and the coincidence of deep levels of social, economic and political inequality, the scant respect with which some people treat people who are unlike them - unlike them in race, language, ethnicity, culture, religion and even in the way others are perceived to speak and dress. South Africans entrench these cleavages because they are comfortable, accommodating within their ken only that which people know and are comfortable with. Respect and decency are accorded only those who seem ‘like us' or where interests coincide. This is how inclusion in "community and society" is wrought and through that, is accumulated personal and other forms of influence and power. This makes some powerful. When one is powerful, another has to be powerless. This power paradigm is cyclically reinforced in the struggle for access to personal, economic, social and political resources. Because this wasn't at stake in the euphoria of World Cup celebrations, it became easily possible for people across different cleavages to see others primarily as people, and secondarily as people with whom they share something in common - that is support for South Africa. This is why this was possible in this period. The knowing about each other that might have happened over the last month ought to continue. It has set in motion an opportunity that ought to be capitalised.

Outside of the World Cup, it is possible that South Africans may seek to continue not to engage and understand others, perpetuating a parochial insularity because "the others" are constructed and construed as something else. In many instances South Africans can hardly bring themselves to admit that "those others" exist. If their existence is acknowledged at all, it has to be obscured from view. What else can explain suburbanite's charitably contributing to relief efforts - but strenuously resisting any temporary sheltering of the victims of 2008 xenophobic/negrophobic attacks within the open spaces in their midst. The shame of "otherness' is also why South Africa's towns and cities hid away the beggars, the paupers, the pavement traders and the marginal - all citizens - from the rest of us and from our visitors. In short, people as well as the institutions of Government and the State appear to have no respect and civility between and amongst themselves and absolutely none for others. Incivility characterises many parts of our society. Of the varied elements of that pernicious thing called apartheid - its parochial legacy of artificial separation and disrespect has been its most enduring with its systemic effect manifesting in the predatory logics of exclusion and exploitation. That is why security companies paid their workers pittances for World Cup duty, and that is why many of the jobs created by the World Cup are casual and temporary. Large corporates yet again used the opportunity to make not justified and sustainable profits, but short term, super profits, just as they did through many other service delivery areas in housing and other infrastructure related works before the World Cup. The involvement of political notables in this kind of behaviour is particularly egregious and sets the tone for everyone else to behave in this way. For instance, the recent verdict of "guilty of corruption" for former SA Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi by the South Gauteng High Court, must surely be begging the question amongst his former underlings, "If he could behave that way and get away with it for so long, why can't we?"

This shortsighted, short term-ism that characterises behaviour is understandable within the logic of late capitalist super accumulation and consumption. Curtailing the freedom of private sector providers to make profits and behave as they please would go against the grain of our constitution. But surely, it must occur to them that it is their own interest and survival to tamper such excessive accumulation and consumption since it is by definition unsustainable and can only come at the cost to others. This behaviour has found its most naked expression in rendering our society open to every rapaciously myopic private interest. Beyond previous private sector collusion to fix the price of food and medicine, appealing to the mask of an empty rhetoric of market-ism and free enterprise, in the lead up to World Cup input prices such as cement and steel was also collusively fixed amongst suppliers and users who reached cosy deals on kickbacks - since they spotted the catch 22 situation of a government hard up in need of the inputs they provide. They thus used the opportunity to squeeze as much as possible out of the deals they were locked into, even if it meant resorting to unethical means. There is nothing free about monopolistic collusive behaviour. It undermines the freedom of choice. Given our history, we have to make the necessary small sacrifices so that we expand choice, not limit it. Post-Transition, many more South Africans have a voice, few however, have any choice. It seems that both the freedom dividend and the dividends of the World Cup benefit only those who are already free - free from poverty and free to make choices and benefit from the choices they make. Those freedoms are inapplicable to those who appear to be "unlike us". The reality of South Africa today is that personal, private and self "interest" calculations drive every facet of behaviour.

Politics and the State have not been immune from this kind of behaviour. Often the state and government has come across as distant and uncaring. The arms deal and large scale low intensity corruption, Mbeki's well documented lies and machinations to remain in power in the governing party, the selected and seemingly arbitrary application of the rule of law and regulations, untampered and rapacious accumulationist tendencies accompanied by rampant consumerism amongst the social, economic and political elite with nary a care for how others might live. The President's perceived weak and unsteady leadership, opposition parties scramble for minor incremental advantage - all have rendered public life, the State, politics and the economy enclaves and sites of private scramble through chauvinist prejudice and exploitation, rather than sites for the pursuit of the public good, through common principle. This may strike some as naïve and it probably is. But this is not to suggest that politics and society be insulated from the thrust of competition, contestation and conflict, since that is the very stuff of politics and society. The argument is that for certain developmental goals (perhaps education, health and job creation) and how they will be achieved, a certain minimum consensus is required. A further consensus to conduct politics and economics within a set of bounded rules respected by all and across all levels of society is also necessary. Sadly, since the adoption of the Constitution, this agreement to play by the rules has evidently not been respected.

In relation to the World Cup, this minimum consensus, and attitude of "do whatever it takes" is what has seen it to deliver this World Cup on time and to scale. If it was possible to undertake such a commitment with rigour and vigour then surely South Africans have to ask themselves and ask of their leaders why delivery in other areas of public life is so lacking? Along with the minimum consensus amongst South Africans of doing all it takes to deliver the World Cup, developing partnerships and acquiring the skills necessary, came the fact that FIFA held stringent oversight and supervision over those responsible for delivery and held them to account at every step of the way. In doing so, defined sanctions and penalties for non delivery and late delivery were clearly defined and imposed by FIFA.

Citizens, might learn from this - that conducting our relations in recognition of the common rules of the game, and more importantly, the common humanity of those that we adverse and or aver with is a necessary ingredient of collective citizen action to enable citizens to hold leaders and government to account in the manner that FIFA did. FIFA did this effectively through its myriad, if unacceptable impositions, because it was in its interests and in the interest of its profits. Citizens and citizen groups need to realise the power that developing mutually intersecting common interests can have, in order to develop a sustained programme in which they come together to foster a degree of collective action.

In the absence of common collective action fostered by this mutually intersecting set of interests, the nasty brutishness that has had a history in this country and which continues in the present, will find continuation following the lines of cleavage and entrenched division and separation based on bigotry, chauvinism, discrimination, exploitation and continued marginalisation. What we require is a South African "commons", based not on race, language, religion, culture or some other figment, but on common humanity, common decency, fairness, equality, civility, understanding, respect, a commitment to understanding the wants, hopes, fears, and desires of our fellow citizens - black or white, rich or poor, religious or heathen.

In the absence of developing such commonality, the next target of attack of the myriad protests evidenced over the last ten years in communities around the country and in the negrophobic and xenophobic attacks, will be "the uncommon". There is no need to spell out who that is. It is all of us who have separated ourselves from the rest. Leaders from followers, the rich from the poor, the powerful from the powerless, white from black. The incipient idea of a South African exceptionalism born of our transition, has allowed us to lose the tendency to be common and find common cause with others separated from us either through the artificial categories of race, or economic and social categories imposed before 1994 and those which have been invented after. Elites have been insulated from and have isolated themselves from the common. Underrated as it is, common sense is what needs to prevail. Not the common bigotry of chauvinism. This is easier said than done, given that common sense is the least common of all the senses. For starters, if the camaraderie of World Cup celebrations is to be sustained, South Africans may need to simply do two things: firstly change their stereotypes and behaviour and secondly, accept that some genuine level of redistribution from rich (and this includes rich blacks) to the poor (and this might include poor whites) is necessary.

Without mainstreaming poor and marginalised South Africans and their ability to participate in economy and society whilst simultaneously ensuring the material upliftment of impoverished citizens as the means to their participation in society, any rapprochement across citizens and between cleavage groups, will remain ephemeral and symbolic rather than real, substantial and sustainable.

Written by: Ebrahim Fakir, Manager of the Governance Department at EISA, the Electoral Institute for the Sustainability of Democracy in Africa