Race and representation at 2010 World Cup

After a week of thought-provoking seminars and discussions, the Annual Teach – In, run by the Department of Politics and International Studies, concluded on Friday with Professor Guy Berger speaking on Race and Representation in the meaning/s of the 2010 World Cup. A Rhodes University Journalism graduate, Berger was a student activist and a political detainee and now is head of the School of Journalism while maintaining his reputation as a critique and commentator on the world of journalist and the media.

What did the Soccer World Cup mean from the official South African point of view? Berger referenced Dayan & Katz: Media Events (1992), who said that major events such as the Cup “hang a halo over the TV set and transform the viewing experience.” Transformative media events, they continue, redefine the boundaries of society. Berger asks... do they?

To open up this idea further, he explored analogies thrown up by the predominant cliché of the Cup: First Time on African Soil. It trips readily enough off the tongue, but what does it actually mean? Breaking it down, Berger analysed the emotive content of each word, discussing their careful choosing as a way to create “symbolic engineering”, re-imaging both South Africa and the connection, presented as an almost mystical bond, with the rest of Africa.

First Time, for example, has an extensive range of meanings; first kiss, first night together... bringing the Soccer World Cup to Africa was, as per Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, the culmination of a love affair, and the acknowledgement of a neglected part of the world, to which FIFA in some respects owed reparation.

African is another multi-layered word. When Blatter said it was “time to give something back to Africa”, he was perhaps referring to the chequered history, incorporating both slavery and colonialism that exists between the West and this continent. The South African government pushed the analogy further, positioning South Africa as a representative of all Africa, rather than a stand-alone nation.

This rhetoric serves different purposes. What does 'Africa' actually mean? Jungles and wildlife, says Berger, present an alluring, if somewhat scary, image in connection with the word. (The use of a cartoon leopard, nicknamed Zakumi, 'tamed' this association). Generally, though, when referring to people, 'Africa' tends to mean 'black', and generalisations based on blackness are a constant in the media.

The generalisations tend to be divided. On the positive, albeit it cloyingly sentimental, side, the image is one of child-like people with untarnished “ubuntu” character, dancing and dreaming through their days. The flip side of the coin is overwhelmingly negative: blackness is represented as primitive, tribal, promiscuous, or as a picture of victimhood. Both of these views are racist; both, says Berger, depend on the old duality of the Noble Savage.

The media build up to the Soccer World Cup was a mix of Afro-pessimism and optimism, a mix of the noble (dreamers and dancers) and the savage (machete attacks and HIV infection.) The huge success of the Cup, with its great outpouring of warmth and ubuntu, was, on the face of it, a clear win for the optimists. But this was a false flower, Berger says, and false flowers fade. The Noble Savage binary, focusing as it does solely on race, is intensely limiting, ignoring the many other factors that influence cultural life.

The challenge now is to reconstruct the meaning of the Cup as a true reality, moving beyond rhetoric to show the world the range of realities which exist within South Africa and Africa as a whole. Let's fight, Berger says, to steer a path between romanticism and cynicism, to get to a point where race is not the tipping point between success or failure.