By Raj on 06/18/2010"If we are not listened to and if the demands are not met we will continue the struggle. In fact we will become more radical and militant the longer government ignores us."
When I was on DemocracyNow! last week, I managed, in my own stuttering-at-five-in-the-morning-oh-my-god-I’m-talking-to-Amy-Goodman-and-Juan-Gonzales kind of way to suggest two things about the current World Cup in South Africa. First, as S’bu Zikode told me last week
It is becoming clear that in the world cup we’re going to be excluded but our names are being used to justify the goodness of our country in the world. The country is divided. There are certain people who are benefiting and we are excluded – we want to tell the other side of the story. Some of us are homeless, hungry, don’t have freedom of expression.In other words, the poor are being used by the World Cup. But the other point I wanted to argue was that World Cup can also, in a clearly asymmetric way, be used by the poor. This isn’t a story that makes it either to the press, or to the analysis about the ills of Fifa. Protests in Durban recently have tried to get the world’s press to shine a light on how apartheid remains, and to provide cover for street marches that would have been illegally shut down in the past. See, for instance, this:
