Africa World Cup: reportage and reality.

So the World Cup’s over – viva Espagne and all that. South Africa were out of it after 10 days, Ghana went out in the quarter finals so the most famous global sports event didn’t quite turn out as the ‘Africa World Cup’ it was hyped up to be.

The question now is not ‘will the World Cup change Africa’ but how has the tournament helped – or hindered – our perception of it? And what will we remember? The fanfare of complaints about vuvuzelas, broadcasting blunders like “that goal” and dodgy ticket dealings spring to mind. (And in fairness we will probably try to forget England’s less than impressive performance).

But has it really done anything positive for the host nation? There’s certainly been more media attention to it – the BBC’s sports reporters and Africa correspondents have been keeping busy with various updates on both the tournament and the mood of the nation.

In theory, this is a good thing. In reality, some of the reports have been mixed – at worst, distorted and ridiculous. Like the one that glorified the centre of Johannesburg as being super safe and cosmopolitan enough to be able to sit outside drinking coffee, New York style. Or take a tour through one of its roughest townships like Soweto.

This is not “news.” The World Cup hasn’t triggered those features – they’ve been happening for years. It’s just that they’ve been shoved into the spotlight because football mania means broadcasters have had a reason to report them.

Why aren’t we hearing more of the real news about South Africa and its Sub-Saharan neighbours? Like tourism: The Kruger Parks’ animal numbers are improving. Or crime fighting: Kenya is registering all mobile phones.

Today’s Sunday Times gave a good example of the reality of the situation, not dancing around pretending trumpets and colourful shirts will plaster over its political tensions. Zimbabweans who’ve fled to S.A are now being told to leave “or die” because unemployment is set to rocket again now that the World Cup – that generated so many jobs – has ended. Quite how we should then respond to Jacob Zuma’s vow that “We cannot go back. We must maintain this momentum, and build on our successes” I don’t know.

And what did African people make of the World Cup? UjenziBora, a regular Tweeter of news and goings-on, told me: “it brought pple closer(obvious), it was more fun here on Twitter ~ #wc.” (And you can see why, given tonight’s long, drawn out Final…)

Obviously the World Cup has given S.A lots of reasons to jump and shout – quite literally. It’s the distorted, rose-tinted view of how much it’s “put South Africa on the map” that gets me. Let’s just hope the door opened by the world cup doesn’t get forgotten by its media.

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