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Afrighana versus United States of North America – a continental dilemma

Rousseau is a voluntary exile from professional philosophy, where having to talk metaphysics eventually became unbearably irritating. He now spends his time trying to arrest the rapid decline in common sense exhibited by his species, both through teaching critical thinking and business ethics at the University of Cape Town, and through activities aimed at eliminating the influence of religious ideology in public policy. When not being absurdly serious, he’s one of those left-wing sorts who enjoys red wine, and he is alleged to be able to cook a mean Bistecca Fiorentine.

In the frenzied fervour of our support for teams in the World Cup, it’s right to interrogate our motives. As Bafana Bafana proudly bowed out of 2010, most South African support swung to an African team – any African team. But there were also cheers for the underdog. Would any underdog have done, or were local USA supporters motivated by other moral reasons?

In the minutes before Ghana took on the USA in the first round of 16 game, a friend and I were discussing where our support lay. She wanted Ghana to win, and I expressed a preference for a USA victory. I wanted the American team to win on the grounds of their soccer culture. The approach the USA has taken to professional association football (as distinct from other forms of “football”) of late seemed a better example of what the South African team and administrators should aspire to.

I can understand why South Africans, and Africans in general, like the idea of one of “our” teams doing well. But it doesn’t quite make sense for me, as a fan, to support teams simply because they represent an African nation. There is just too much about Africa that is difficult to support. From female genital mutilation in Egypt and homophobia in Malawi and Zimbabwe, to assorted human rights abuses in the DRC, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, there are things about this continent that clearly expose a fundamental divide between Africa as a collective concept, and the sort of world in which I’d prefer to live.

As an example of African football, Ghana is, of course, also a complicated example, given that only one of their squad of 23 actually plays football in that country. When the vast majority of the national team lives and works outside of the nation reflected on the covers of their passports, to what extent does it still make sense to think of them as representatives of their respective nations, let alone Africa?

Furthermore, perhaps there are legitimate concerns around buying into a condescending stereotype when we are proud of an African team doing well. In doing so, we acknowledge that we are surprised, that we expected less. The comparison between “Africa” and “Europe” exposes this – we don’t speak of European teams doing well, because that what we expect. If a marginal (in footballing terms) European nation were to do well – Andorra, for example – we’d be surprised at the achievements of Andorra, rather than speak of their achievements as a triumph for Europe.

This is because a continent is a largely meaningless way of carving up the world, except of course in the literal sense of actually being how the world happens to be carved up. But we nevertheless speak of Africa, or Europe or North America because they represent some unity of purpose, or some other identifiable feature that makes it sensible to agglomerate them – despite the vast cultural differences between, say, France and Germany, or even Canada and the USA.

So on the one hand, the idea of “Africa” makes little sense to me outside of geography, and outside of things with which I’d prefer not to be associated, such as homophobia, genocide and being newcomers to the global economic party (with all of the troubles that may accompany that, such as being useful sources of cheap labour for those who would exploit our naiveté and lack of economic clout).

Similarly, a country being spoken of as representing a continent makes equally little sense when discussing positive achievements. If something is worth emulating, it should ideally serve as a model for everybody and every nation that has similar issues – not simply those on the continent of which it happens to be a part.

So, South Africa’s liberal Constitution, often held up as an example for Africa to follow, should to the same extent be the model that we would prefer North Korea follow. It’s even the model we should prefer the USA to follow in areas such as same-sex marriage and the death penalty, where significant violations of liberty and justice are disguised by the rhetoric and mythology of a developed state.

Speaking of the “plucky North Koreans” or the “courageous South Africans” (insert your preferred underdog) can be said to embrace a condescension, especially when it allows us to ignore broader aspects of culture by encouraging a meaningless association of one nation with continental neighbours that might be entirely dissimilar – or, more importantly, might not be a model to emulate at all. And Africa is not a country, for all we pretend that it is whenever we support an African team, no matter who the opposition might be.

As a South African, I can’t shake the desire for South Africa to do well in events such as the World Cup. This is despite the fact that I’m fully aware that my own arguments about nationhood can just as easily be deployed to make nations themselves divisible, and so leave me unable to defend and endorse any idea of South African-ness – and by extension pride at South African achievements. Such is the apparent irrationality of patriotism. But this clinical approach ignores the motivational aspect of patriotic feelings, or the social cohesion to which these narratives can give rise.

And this is exactly why I wanted the USA to win. Even though both Ghana and the USA have relatively poor track-records in the Fifa World Cup, Ghana is an established force in African football, and the second most successful African team, after Egypt. The USA, by contrast, hardly fielded a national team for much of the 1980s, and was struggling to get a functional national league running until 1989, when they were awarded the hosting rights for the 1994 World Cup.

A simplified account of the years leading up to and following the 1994 World Cup speak of what is possible when a sport is well-resourced and professionally administered. In a team that has few stars, they showcase how teamwork, discipline and dedication can result in a team that is a serious contender for international honours, despite a near-complete lack of historical success.

This is a lesson that South African football needs to learn, and perhaps one that African football generally could learn as well. For all the joy the win over France in the last group game brought, it’s not only the fact that most of the French players on the pitch were effectively boycotting the game that we should remember. We should also remember that an inspirational exit from the first stage of the competition does not tell us that South African football is healthy, or has laid a firm foundation for future growth and success.

The USA may never go on to become a force in world soccer. But as an example of professionalism and dedication, their modern association football culture contains elements that South Africa might do well to emulate. We’ve gone some way along that road already, for example in discarding at least one notable ego from the South African squad. But the work is far from done. And one can’t help but wonder whether a loss to France may have made this more obvious, and have been a better result for the long-term health of South African football.

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