World Cup shows Africa’s soccer at crossroads

By Robin Toskin in Johannesburg

Lost in the razzmatazz of the opening ceremony of the 2010 World Cup- a first ever to be staged in Africa, was a dung beetle motif in the middle of

the celebrations.

In the 40-minute ceremony at the calabash-shaped Soccer City Stadium, along came a huge dung beetle rolling a huge Jabulani ball.

Other than the lip mention that the beetle is cherished by some South African communities for its ability to nourish the soil, nothing else was said of it.

Among the Egyptians, several species of the dung beetle, especially Scarabaeus sacer, enjoyed a sacred status in ancient times.

As recorded in Wikipedia.org, the image of the beetle in Egyptian hieroglyphics represents a trilateral phonetic which transliterate as xpror ḫpr meaning "to come into being", "to become" or "to transform".

The derivative term xprw or ḫpr(w) is variously translated as "form", "transformation", "happening", "mode of being" or "what has come into

being", depending on the context.

By show casing the beetle, South Africa was saying there is a transformation

of sorts. Africa is coming into being.

During the opening ceremony on Friday South Africa President Jacob Zuma, with President Kibaki also in attendance, proclaimed that it is "Africa’s

World Cup. It is Africa’s time."

His was not alone. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said later in an interview with Fifa.com: "I firmly believe that Africa could be seeing its renaissance with the coming of the World Cup to South Africa ... South

Africa and the entire African continent must take advantage of the benefits created by the World Cup."

Yet all this talk of an African Renaissance was betrayed by Fifa’s guest list. Among the invited guests were two Heads of State, Kibaki (Kenya) and

Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe) with their Premiers, Raila Odinga and Morgan Tsvangirai. It is not lost to anyone what marriage of convenience is.

When in 1998 then Deputy President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki talked of an African Renaissance as a call to rebellion, against dictatorship as "neither

has Africa need for the petty gangsters who would be our governors by theft of elective positions, as a result of holding fraudulent elections, or by purchasing positions of authority through bribery and corruption."

While South Africa has taken huge strides in improving her infrastructure, both road and sporting, countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe are lagging behind.

And all the African countries proclaiming African Renaissance meet in one pot of social upheaval captured by Zuma’s desperate call made in May that: "In this time (i.e. the duration of the football World Cup), we need good South Africans. Let them just for four weeks be good. Just for four weeks." So what was the beetle for, again?