Political Analysis of South Africa's Hosting of the Rugby and Cricket World Cups: Lessons for the 2010 Football World Cup and Beyond?

Abstract

This paper compares South Africa's hosting of two of the world's largest sporting events to date, the 1995 Rugby World Cup and the 2003 Cricket World Cup by doing a political analysis of these two mega-events and relating that analysis to South Africa's hosting of the 2010 Football World Cup. Although nations habitually put forward the tangible benefits that such events are likely to bring as justification for hosting them, not many analyses have sought to explore the processes through which the more elusive benefits are said to accrue, namely, identity formation and signalling aspects, on the one hand, and democracy and human rights enhancing aspects on the other. Through this analysis it is demonstrated how South Africa has traditionally drawn from the realm of politics using its perceived moral authority for hosting such events, yet the folding of the overtly political into the sporting arena has sometimes led to unintended consequences. South Africa has also become much more businesslike in its approach to sports events. Whereas the Rugby and Cricket World Cups were steeped in the symbolic importance of an ‘imagined community’, these sentiments are likely to become diluted in the face of a more consumerist global football milieu and the powerful role of FIFA in deciding who gets what, when and where.