Just as the football at the 2010 World Cup will be great, someone will make lots of money. It is not going to be local businesses for sure. This excellent 13 minute short documentary (“Trademark 2010″) for Dutch TV channel, VPRO, covers the fantasy that local people–small businesspeople, informal traders–will make money or get jobs during the tournament.
Mainly filmed in Cape Town, the tightly structured short film consists of interviews with, among others, a young informal tour operator (who wants to corner the visiting Spanish-speaking market), a construction worker at the stadium (who contemplates the fact that he won’t have work after the stadium is completed), a former sports administrator (who laments FIFA’s greed), the leader of informal traders in downtown Cape Town (who will be prevented from trading during the World Cup), sociologist Ari Sitas and Eddie Cottle of the group Campaign for Decent Work 2010. And there’s the city official who sells jargon.
Only question: Why does the film end by legitimizing former councilor, Arthur Weinburg, who represents the Cape Town Environmental Protection Association–a front for rich whites in the neighborhood where the stadium is located and have no other reasons to oppose it other than it is being built in their neighborhood and not somewhere else?
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One reply on “Who will benefit from 2010?”
The darker side of mega-sports events are revealed. For a non-profit organisation, FIFA must make a lot of money! The control they have over the commercial side of the World Cup is immense. I’ve met plenty of people in South Africa who believe that the World Cup will bring them riches and pull them out of poverty. How can it be a tournament for all?
I don’t think that Arthur Weinburg was legitimised. Did many government heads roll over the Wembley debacle? He just came across as an embittered old man.