So I have made my way to Durban, on KwaZulu-Natal’s Indian Ocean Coast and South Africa’s favorite summer holiday getaway. Just a few hours in and I already feel rejuvenated. For a host of reasons — weather, the isolation of my B+B, an inability or unwillingness to adjust to a normal sleep schedule, typical mid-trip malaise — I’ve been in the doldrums.
But it’s warmer in Durban (still chilly on my first night, but nothing like the highveld) and The Beach Hotel, which I will call home for these three nights, is located at just about the epicenter of Durban World Cup life. When I look out my window I see the Indian Ocean lapping up against the beach. And situated on the beach is the FIFA Fanfest Zone. In each of the World Cup cities FIFA and the local organizers has set up a substantial location for fans to gather, to watch the games on a massive Big Screen tv located above a stage, on which there is an array of entertainment. Food and drink are available, as are numerous diversions. (I’m not sure who bears responsibility — FIFA’s name is front and center, of course, but the sponsors are a range of the international sponsors of the World Cup — Coca Cola, for example) and local companies many of which are not international sponsors (Castle and Castle Light are the beer options, unlike in the stadiums where it is a Budweiser only world.) This is directly across from my hotel room.
By the time I arrived and was checked in and got to the Fanzone it was nearing halftime of the Spain-Honduras match, which Spain won handily (if not overwhelmingly like Portugal did in its 7-0 thrashing of North Korea that also effectively destroyed Cote d’Ivoire’s slim chance of advancing). The real benefit of the Fanzone is that it allows thousands of fans to gather to watch the games, many of whom simply cannot afford to go to the regular games in Durban and even fewer of whom are able or inclined to travel to see the games in Polokwane and Cape Town and all points in between. The pre-, post-, and between-matches entertainment is a mixture of sheer advertising (if I did not know MTN was a local sponsor I’d sure as hell know now) get-the-masses-shaking-their-asses dj-ing, look-how-impossibly-happy-we-are-you-should-be-too hosting, and the expected -look-how-well-we’re-doing South Africa boosting. It may not be bread, but it sure is circuses, and the people seem happy.
The first thing one notices at the Fanfest (and at the venues, but at the venues it’s more to be expected) is the massive presence of police and security and volunteers (who, as I understand it are actually paid employees — I’ve read most earn around R14/hour for ten hour days — about $2 an hour, which sounds worse than it is, but is certainly not generous either). The “volunteer” positions will, of course, disappear once the World Cup is done, temporal gifts of a temporal event, not likely to be part of any of the long-range guarantees that the World Cup is supposed to build. But anyone taking these jobs has to know the deal and they are happy for them. And whoever funds these slots has been incredibly generous if not with their pay then with their abundance. The volunteers are ubiquitous and thanks for that. The volunteers tend to be the key point of contact for most people attending the games and the Fanfests and most are friendly and helpful. They are a part of the World Cup that have worked, both literally and metaphorically.
The police fall into another category. They have been an abundant presence in the other cities I’ve been to, but this being my first Fanfest experience thus far, and my having spent considerable time in Durban in the past, I found their overwhelming numbers stunning. Not necessarily in a bad way, but in simple wonderment. Their presence — which includes a specially made semi-permanent tented police station not a hundred meters from my 4th floor room and on the promenade leading to the beach and Fanzone — is understandable. South Africa’s worst nightmare is to have some British couple murdered as they walk the beachfront in Durban, the juxtaposition of images of South African crime with the embodiment of the quintessential tourist tableau being catnip for journalists and potential detractors. The police presence here helps to assure that those headlines will never happen.
But I wonder two things. First, unlike the volunteers, are these police and their increasing numbers going to be a tangible legacy of the World Cup? South Africa has promised that the added numbers will continue — if that is the case, in and of itself the World Cup might prove worth it, which is to say if the World Cup provided the protection and justification to throw enormous resources at long-term policing in South Africa it will have come up with a concrete solution to an intractable problem. This is especially true if all (as opposed to some indeterminate percentage) of the new police will continue on, something I am dubious will happen, as opposed to many of the new police merely being deputized for the World Cup, with many to be let go much like the volunteers, with an understanding that this is how things work.
My second question is about the allocation of police resources away from those places where tourists will ever wander. Keeping the beachfront and stadium area (by the way — the new Stadium, located several kilometers from the Fanzone, is spectacular — the most impressive of the stadia to my mind) safe simply makes sense. We can talk about allocation of resources all we want, but anyone who thought that the bulk of the short-term attention would not go to protecting the tourists might be able to hang their hat on moral superiority, but they don’t have much real-world sense. That said, I do wonder if policing in the townships and on the less tourist-friendly side streets just a block or two removed in some instances from the fun in the sun on the beach — already inexcusably light — is suffering as a result of the emphasis on the public face of the Cup. It is one thing to devote massive new resources for the short term to this event. It is another actively to draw resources from areas that desperately need them, and I do hope that the areas where people are actually most likely to be victimized by crime have also seen an uptick, even if not on the same scale. Further, I hope that the new police presence, however it is composed and however much bigger it is, will shift away from the beachfront (not totally of course — there are always tourists and thus images to protect) to the areas most in need of better and more abundant policing.
[My editor has suggested, and I agree, that adding a subtitle to these entries to provide some context, or “spice,” as he put it, is a good idea. His wish is my command.]
