Can South Africa overcome the challenges of bad publicity?
Written by Prosper Yao Tsikata
Center for International Studies & E.W. Scripps College of Journalism, Ohio University,
Athens, Ohio
As the world converges in South Africa in a couple of weeks for the world’s most popular sports – soccer –tongues are wagging in soccer circles whether South Africa will rise up to the occasion to deliver an incidentfree tournament or not.
(…)
Infrastructurewise, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Pretoria holds much more in common with Paris, London, Amsterdam or any ultramodern city in the Western hemisphere than with the rest of the continent. Internet access, road infrastructure, hotel facilities, and stadia are all well above what is expected in most SubSaharan African countries with regard to access and quality. South African can compete with most western countries favorably on the aforementioned fronts – South Africa is a first world with a third world blemish or, perhaps, a third world with a first world innocence. This makes the choice of the biggest economy on the African continent for the 2010 World Cup an ideal choice.
As testament to its capability to rise to the occasion of the 2010 World Cup, allusion can be made to the 1995 Rugby World Cup that was hosted and Blank I by South Africa. Interestingly, it was the first time in the history of Rugby that every match was held in one country. The lesson is that South Africa did not only pass the litmus test, it demonstrated a capacity par excellence.
(…)
Today, Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial capital, is touted as the murder capital of the world for some of the notorious crimes in that city. New York, Detroit, Memphis, and Los Angeles, American cities reputed for violence and unbridled gun use, are only a pale shadow of the violence in the townships in South Africa.
Critics see the astronomical levels of murder in the rainbow country as a damper on its ability to successfully host an incidentfree competition. In January, 2010, Protektorvest, a company that manufactures stab vest, gave South Africa a bad publicity by introducing a stab vest with country color decorations for fans who intend to visit South Africa during the tournaments. There is no doubt this unneeded publicity might deter some football fans from venturing into a turf with a bad reputation for gun and knife crimes.
(…)
The bald truth is that as the world turns its attention on South Africa from June 11, through July 11, the whole continent is on trial. The outcome of events Blank II South Africa, despites its great variations with the rest of the continent, will go a long way to undo some of the negative stereotypical images the mention of Africa conjures on the minds of those who only know the continent through the mediated lenses of the media. If things go wrong, the backlash certainly Blank III those negative stereotypes. Go, South Africa, go! And make the continent proud.
from: http://niger1.com/ accessed on May, 29
Mr. Tsikata says in his text that: