The stadium operator SAIL STADEFRANCE announced yesterday that it is pulling out of the 30-year lease agreement with the City of Cape Town to manage the 4.5 billion rand ($600 million) World Cup stadium at Green Point.
SAIL chairman Morne du Plessis explained that “Shareholders were not prepared to enter the lease under circumstances that projected substantial losses.” Since PSL matches in Cape Town rarely draw more than a few thousand spectators, and rugby already has an excellent stadium at Newlands, local taxpayers must now shoulder the World Cup debt burden long into the future.
For further reading, see my academic journal articles from 2007 and 2008 (free download), in which I argued that in the long run the monumental Cape Town Stadium — built at FIFA’s insistence — would not benefit South African football, but instead would privatize profits (construction companies anyone?) and socialize debt.
4 replies on “Cape Town Stadium: Socializing Debt, Privatizing Profits”
The economic wound of the world cup on the South African body will surely stay for a while…though in one sense, maybe we need that wound to help us understand some of the previously hidden but equally exploiative aspects of ‘modernization’.
Dear P., in Italy we would say “all the world is country”, and i’m sure you get my point! We all remember, among hundreds of similar “socialized” wastes, Italia 90’s stadiums, even surrounded by never used and costly train stations, conference centers etc etc. It’s so sad to see that you were right about this, and I’m thinking of a couple of things that could have been done with half of those money.
[…] Newlands, local taxpayers must now shoulder the World Cup debt burden long into the future.”https://www.footballiscominghome.info/the-hosts/cape-town-stadium/ This entry was posted in Stories. Bookmark the permalink. ← FSF September […]
July 2012 update:
“Trade Union [federation] COSATU has had discussions with engineers and architects who feel that it is possible to turn the Cape Town Stadium into low cost housing for people in the city.”
via kickoff.com: http://bit.ly/NpYwoH