SPEECH
BY A.D.HARVEY PROPOSING THE MOTION "THIS HOUSE BELIEVES SOUTH AFRICA IS NOT FIT TO HOST THE WORLD CUP" AT THE DURHAM UNION
SOCIETY, 13th
MAY 2010.
Mr. President,
It is once again a great privilege for me
to be able to address this august and honourable house - and especially good to
know that this time I will have a Seconder who will
actually be seconding me, rather than - as those of you who were present when I
last spoke in November will no doubt recall - a so-called Seconder
who decided instead to speak on the side of the opposition!
It is certainly my contention that South Africa under the present dispensation
is not fit to stage the 2010 Soccer World Cup for reasons that I will now
explain. During November 2007 Peter Burgstaller, a
former Austrian professional goal-keeper and an official of the Austrian
Football Association, attended the draw for the qualifying group stages of the
2010 World Cup in Durban. After the draw he visited the Selborne Hotel and Golf Estate at Pennington on the Natal
south coast, and there, on the golf course, he was found murdered on 23rd
November, having been callously shot in the chest merely in order to steal his
mobile 'phone and golfing equipment. This shocking murder was widely reported
around the outside world (though alas quickly forgotten), but in South Africa itself it did not receive as
much publicity as may have been expected. Why you may ask? Because in the
"new" South Africa murder is a way of life, and
not for nothing is the country frequently referred to
as the "murder capital of the world".
Latest figures released by the SAPS Crime
Information Management show that from April 2008 to March 2009 there were
18,148 murders throughout South Africa. This works out at almost 50
per day, or about one every 28 minutes. There were also reported to have been
71,500 sexual offences (mainly rapes - about one every 5 minutes) 396,615
assaults (i.e. muggings), 246,616 burglaries from residential properties,
70,009 burglaries from business premises and 75,968 thefts of motor vehicles
(i.e. car-jackings). All this, it should be born in
mind, in a country with a population roughly the same as the UK - and it should
also be remembered that these are official
figures, so the true numbers are therefore undoubtedly even higher. Yet here is
a society which FIFA believes is worthy and capable of staging the second
largest sporting tournament in the world. It is madness, pure madness.
FIFA was of course determined to stage the
2010 World Cup somewhere on the African continent for their
own internal political reasons - but of course now there is no longer
any advanced Western nation on the African continent this was an impossible and
ridiculous aim. All the north African countries could be susceptible to Islamic
terrorist campaigns of one degree or another, and all the sub-Saharan nations
are now such basket-cases of chaos, corruption and civil wars that the very
idea of staging such an important international competition in any such state was
out of the question (one only has to recall the terrorist atrocity against the
Togolese team during the recent African Cup of Nations Tournament in Angola to
realise why!). The only feasible choice was therefore South Africa, which in spite of now being a
third-world state itself, still seemingly possesses all the infrastructure and
facilities of a first-world nation left over from the days of civilised rule.
In reality this is however an illusion, as
every facet of state infrastructure has been slowly but surely collapsing ever
since 1994. There has been a steady and escalating exodus of skilled South
African medical staff (the South African
Medical Journal of February 2007 estimated that in just four months there
had been 639 applications by qualified South African nurses for posts
overseas), and as a result the South African health service has now descended
to typical world-world standards - so all those foolish enough to visit the
country for the World Cup should make sure that they don't fall ill! The South
African highway system is simply no longer being maintained, with pot-holes
remaining un-repaired and causing an ever increasing number of road deaths (News24.com reported that there were 448
road deaths in South Africa during just the first fortnight
of December 2009 - almost twice the number of the previous year). So if you
visit South Africa for the World Cup please try to
avoid the roads. Perhaps rail travel is a better alternative therefore? Alas
no, for in addition to the fact that trains (particularly in the Cape Town
area) have become magnets for mugging gangs, there is also the other problem of
overhead cable thefts, which according to Railways
Africa of 1st March this year had reached "unprecedented
levels" - and let us not forget either that in February 2001 frustrated
commuters burnt Pretoria Station to the ground in anger with delays caused by
cable thefts! Can you possibly imagine frustrated commuters from Surbiton going
to such extreme lengths!
I can already hear my opponents arguing that
such problems which haunt the "new" South Africa did not prevent the country
from hosting other "successful" international competitions such as
the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the 2003 Cricket World Cup and last year's British
Lions Tour. Closer inspection of all these events show that they were not as
successful as the tame and biased South African media would have us believe
however. At both the Rugby and Cricket World Cups crowds, accept for those
featuring the home team, were far lower than hoped and expected, and in some
cases were so poor that they were positively embarrassing (only the late and
great Bill McLaren had the courage to state this observable fact over the air),
and during the Cricket World Cup at least one England supporter disappeared
never to be heard of again - an ominous occurrence which never received the
international publicity which it warranted. It was much the same during last
year's British Lions Tour when there were brief reports hidden away in the
South African press of four Lions supporters being beaten up and robbed in
Johannesburg on 18th June, "many" tourists being mugged
and robbed in Durban on 21st June which resulted in hospital
treatment, and an armed attack on a bar in Port Elizabeth being frequented by
Lions' fans - yet ominously none of these outrages seem to have been reported
in the British press. The most notorious event of all which occurred during the
1995 Rugby World Cup, however, was the sinister food poisoning of the New Zealand team on the eve of the final.
This highly suspicious happening was never fully investigated or explained - so
should surely therefore have debarred the "new" South Africa from ever staging any major
international sporting tournaments again!
The main reason why these previous World Cups
were able to be staged in the "new" South Africa was because sufficient stadiums
and transport structures were already in place, having been constructed during
the days of civilised rule. The Soccer World Cup is a far larger competition
however, featuring as it does 32 different nations. Extra stadiums and a far
better transport infrastructure simply had to be built in order to cope
therefore, but of course the "new" South Africa didn't possess the skills nor expertise to construct such edifices in such a tight
timeframe, so therefore outside help had to be obtained, most notably from China and from Germany. These overseas contractors
were immediately hampered by an unskilled labour force which soon became prone
to strike action demanding extortionate wage rises however. As recently as July
of last year it was being reported in Project
2010 - Preparing South Africa for the World (the official circular of the
2010 Soccer World Cup Local Organising Committee, a circular which I receive
regularly) that it was doubtful whether a number of new stadiums (most notably
the one in Port Elizabeth) and the new rail link between Johannesburg Airport
and the main PWV centres, would be ready in time, yet somehow - miraculously -
just a few months later everything had apparently been completed in time! The
only conclusion which can be reached, therefore, is - if you'll pardon the pun
- that these new stadiums had been Gerry-built! We therefore seem to be facing
the frightening possibility of another Hillsborough or Heysel
disaster looming at the forthcoming World Cup, with potentially so many
opposing fanatical overseas supporters packing the stadiums.
As I say, the Project 2010 - Preparing South Africa for the World circular is the
official publication of the 2010 Local Organising Committee, so therefore is
their main cheer-leader. The fact that even they have had to admit that there
are serious problems confronting the forthcoming World Cup is therefore highly
significant. I will quote only a few items from just one edition of this
circular (I could have chosen several other similar issues), that of 18th
February. This edition reports a lack of expected demand for accommodation from
overseas supporters (encouragingly the word is evidently getting through about
the dangers!), the worries about a Swine Flu outbreak during the competition,
the concern that Vuvuzelas could cause harmful
effects to ear-drums (I'll explain what Vuvuzelas are
to anyone who is interested afterwards!), the fact that the new Cape Town
stadium has been built with spectators being able to overlook a near-by ladies
toilet (no, I'm not making this up!), the fact that the originally planned free
transport service to the Ellis Park Stadium in Jo'burg
is now going to be charged at R100 per head, and that massive fears have
surfaced about the spread of HIV/AIDS during the tournament. I repeat, don't
forget that all these negative reports come from the official publication of
the Local Organising Committee.
But finally I must turn to the most
disturbing and terrifying recent development in South Africa, and this concerns the
country's internal political ascendancy. Following the installation of the
polygamist Jacob Zuma as President of the
"new" South Africa, his prodigy Julius Malema, the ANC's Youth League's president, has been
attracting much publicity by his chanting of the phrase "Kill the
Boer" (i.e. Afrikaner farmer) and other such genocidal
anti-White hatred. It would appear therefore that the relatively - and I repeat
relatively - benign Mbeki years are well and truly over, and that South Africa is returning to the Mandela era
with a vengeance. The pathological hatred of Malema
and his fellow Mandela-ites is clearly not merely
directed against South African Whites, but against the White Man in general,
and in this regard it should be remembered that the majority of teams competing
at the 2010 World Cup finals are European or European-descended nations. Malema and Co. have a particular hatred for those who they
term "colonialists", and in this regard supporters of the competing
teams from England, the Netherlands, Portugal and Germany (and perhaps others)
are probably in great danger from politically-motivated physical attacks.
Mr. President, I fear that because of the
pig-headed intransigence of FIFA officialdom it is now far too late to
re-locate the 2010 Soccer World Cup to a safer and more congenial country. Why,
for instance, shouldn't the country where football was born be able to stage
the World Cup for the first time since 1966, or why - if it was thought
essential to stage the 2010 tournament in Africa - shouldn't it have been staged in the
relatively stable and football-strong nation of Morocco? Nothing of course can ever be
foreseen in the future with certainty, and it is quite possible that all the
unavoidable problems confronting the 2010 World Cup in South Africa will be
simply swept under the carpet and under-reported, but I'm afraid that similar
to the Roman, come June/July, I foresee the Vaal foaming with much blood.
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