Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Online Letter
Dear friends and fellow South Africans,
South Africa has launched a period of great excitement for the soccer World Cup. The country is coming together in an emotional and intentionally constructed exercise of nation building, which involves the entire population.
We are taking pride in what has been achieved to host this world event. Under the guidance of our President and his Government, we are encouraged to indulge in the inebriation of national pride and glory.
To a certain extent this is necessary, benign and will have long-term benefits for our national psyche.
However, even the brightest silver may have a cloudy lining.
At this time, we must pause to think about all those who will not be reached by the benefits of the World Cup, especially those in rural areas, who will see all this glamour and excitement as happening elsewhere. Many will only hear its distant echoes.
We must realise that there is a great social and economic cost to this national exercise in nation building and national pride. Huge amounts of resources have been diverted from necessary social programmes so that we may have ten extraordinary stadia; at the cost of improvements we could have made to our hospitals, schools, rural roads, police stations, sanitation systems and all that which is used by us, the citizens, every day.
We must also realise that a world event of this nature does not bring capital investment into South Africa. Any investment brings money in with the expectation of future profits which will be taken out. For this reason, foreign investment is only beneficial if its presence in South Africa is permanent enough to create an expanded beneficial effect on the economy through the so-called multiplicator, which effect must be greater than the amount of profits eventually repatriated. This is an investment cycle.
In the case of the World Cup, the investment cycle is very short. FIFA is not a charitable organisation, but an international company on par with McDonalds, General Electric and Mercedes Benz. Its motivation is economic. Its investment cycle in South Africa is extremely short, in that the money it puts in will all be taken out as the referee blows the whistle at the end of the last game.
For this reason, as we rejoice at the commencement of the World Cup, we must also pause to think about the many people who will lose their jobs as it ends. Throughout the world, countries which hosted similar events experienced an economic contraction immediately thereafter.
South Africa is already in an economic crisis and our economy is much smaller than that of many other countries which chose to pay the price of hosting such an event. Therefore, the negative economic impact is going to be relatively greater.
The truth is that we cannot clothe, educate, feed and heal our children with national pride alone.
As I write this newsletter, I am surrounded by the greatest amount of noise I have heard in my life. At 12 o’clock on Wednesday 9 June at the encouragement of our President, the whole of the country stopped for five minutes to blow their Vuvuzelas. It might be one of the few times that all South Africans have done the same thing, at the same time, for the same reason.
This is all good and well. But let us see whether we cannot use this precedent to build out of the national unity and consensus forged on this occasion a new platform which may change the lives of all our people for the better.
What about having, under the same guidance of our President, a national day of efficiency and productivity, in which every one of us commits to increase his or her work output on that day; perhaps to work an extra fifteen minutes? The proceeds of such an effort could to be used to assist unemployed South Africans who, after the World Cup, may constitute as much as 40% of our population.
Yours in the service of the nation,
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP
Contact: Ms Liezl van der Merwe, 082 729 2510.
