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SOCCER-FREE ZONE — a weekly sip from the World Cup
– Pieter-Dirk Uys, The Mercury, 5 July 2010
The poor old world out there is sick and tired.
An oil slick, worse than previous disasters, is enveloping the Florida coast and wetlands, causing death and destruction among the birds and fish. People have lost their jobs. Who will pay? Can it be solved? Who will clean up?
Bombs in Pakistan. Innocent people blown to bits in mosques and schools. The Taliban thumbs its nose at an international force trying to impose a western peace on an eastern trauma. Young soldiers far from home die suddenly and horribly while their families have to keep a stiff upper lip for Queen and Country. 'Oh God, bring the boys home!' is the cry from England, echoed in Utah and Nevada and all over the USA. And Germany, maybe as an after-World Cup thought.
Iraq is old news and blood freshly spilt congeals without headlines. The world has already looked the other way. Oh crap! Iran! A nuclear bomb ticking somewhere underground, aimed at Israel who is so paranoia that they will now stop rowing boats because of their blockade of The Enemy who also shares Jerusalem as a post office to heaven.
Wall Street! Could anything be more horrible than a place where the crooks and scheisters get bailed out of well-deserved bankruptcy under the pretext of upholding civilized norms, while decent hardworking people lose everything?
What’s happening in Somalia? Ethiopia? Are they still dying like flies, or now eating hamburgers. The media decide for us on an hourly basis which news to break and where. Dafur ticks up a genocidal record and Bono’s too busy posing for GQ magazine to go and help in Haiti.
Zimbabwe used to be the headline, but now even the Pol Pot of Africa has to make way for greater monsters like Greece’s Finance Minister, who is trying to turn the iceberg of deficit around the prow of the great ship ‘Hellenic’ into blocks of ice for the sunset drinks of the rest of Europe, who don’t trust workers who siesta during the early afternoon.
A messed-up ‘stan’ in central Asia attacks a neighbouring buggered-up ‘stan’ and thousands die and no one even knows where those Yzxqrsistans are or how to pronounce their nameistans.
The poor old world is sick and tired. But hang on. What’s this sparkle of lights? Where’s this celebration taking place? It looks so beautiful. That mountain. Those stadiums! Weird happy people with green and red and blue hair and funny exhaust pipes coming out of the mouths that make foghorn sounds. It’s out of this world!
No, it’s the Cape of Good Hope. It’s Rustenburg. It’s the Nelson Mandela Metropole. It’s Soccer City Soweto. It’s ….oh crap, did someone switch off their lights?
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