2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup: an opportunity to raise awareness of challenges to social transformation and peace building in South Africa – a coordinated approach

Abstract

As there are only eighteen months before the world's biggest soccer event will be staged on African soil, it is pertinent to address the many expectations and challenges in the field of social transformation for Africa and South Africa's civil society in particular. This article sees the forthcoming FIFA Soccer World Cup to be hosted by South Africa as an opportunity to raise awareness concerning the current challenges to social transformation, peace building and development work experienced by South African non-governmental organisations, governmental and tertiary institutions. It stresses the use of sport as a vehicle for peace building and development in a coordinated approach as exemplified by the Western Cape Network for Community Peace and Development and its Kicking for Peace Programme. The paper recommends the need to strengthen both social transformation and peace building initiatives and those organisations engaged in it by forming or supporting similar active networks as well as by adopting a holistic and coordinated approach involving unconventional methods such as sport. The paper further sugegsts the need to actively use the soccer world cup as a nation-building event which can spread the joy and enthusiasm about soccer before and after 2010 to all communities in South Africa and Africa as a whole.