Penny For Your Thoughts: Sport, immigration and the price we pay for our choices

The over-priced figures we have to pay just to watch the Beautiful Game on the world's biggest stage.

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Letters to the editor

The beautiful game has a price

Sport was meant to unite us, not enrich a few.

Great fun were our younger days. We played soccer with painted rubber balls in Leopold Street, near Soldiers Way – not in the Congo, but right here in Durban. Every patch of grass became a sports field until the police or school prefects chased us away.

We also did some foolish things, like supporting Durban City or Addington FC and occasionally taking our chances to “dodge bottles at Curries” – although that was probably more myth than reality.

In those days, amateur sport still ruled. Peter Hain and many other anti-apartheid activists used sport as a powerful weapon to isolate apartheid South Africa. By targeting rugby, cricket and other sporting codes, they helped dismantle racial segregation, not only in South Africa but also by challenging sporting links with countries such as Australia, Britain, New Zealand and the United States.

Hain’s dream was not simply to liberate sport from apartheid, but to make it accessible to everyone – Black, White and Brown; rich and poor; men and women alike.

Sadly, towards the end of their excellent book, Peter Hain and André Odendaal lament how big business has transformed what were once simple pavement games into giant commercial money-making machines. International cricket, for example, is now often overshadowed by celebrity culture and corporate spectacle. In India, spectators sometimes seem unsure whether they are watching a cricket match or a Bollywood production.

South Africa’s 2010 FIFA World Cup showed a different path. Ticket prices were kept relatively affordable and free Fan Parks allowed millions of ordinary South Africans to share in the experience. Although informal traders and street vendors did not benefit as much as they should have, the tournament nevertheless became a celebration for the entire nation.

Contrast that with the current Club World Cup in the US, where some tickets reportedly cost around $1 000 for matches nowhere near the final. For many ordinary Americans, that is close to half a month’s rent. Elite sport is increasingly becoming the preserve of the wealthy, while everyone else watches from outside the stadium.

This is far removed from the vision of activists such as Hain and Odendaal. A quick look at rugby and cricket in South Africa shows that many Black players who reach provincial and national level still come from elite schools and privileged backgrounds, while talented youngsters from poorer communities and rural areas remain largely invisible.

That was never Peter Hain’s dream.

Is it merely a coincidence that the commercialization of sport and the rise of aggressive nationalism now seem to be advancing side by side? Instead of bringing people together, they risk turning our world into one giant stadium of division.  **| EBRAHIM ESSA **Durban

Accountability starts at the top

The proposed fines of up to R100 000 on employers who hire undocumented foreign nationals promote accountability. However, accountability cannot stop with employers alone.

A government cannot demand accountability from citizens while overlooking failures within its own ranks. Home Affairs, border control and law enforcement officials who neglect their duties or undermine immigration law enforcement must face meaningful consequences. Accountability must begin with those entrusted to uphold the law.

South Africans deserve an immigration system that is fair, effective and applied equally to all who violate the law, irrespective of race, nationality or country of origin. The full force of the law should apply not only to employers who knowingly hire undocumented foreign nationals, but also to public officials whose negligence, incompetence or misconduct weakens our immigration system.

For too long, weak border management, administrative failures and inadequate enforcement have eroded public confidence in managing immigration. Reform requires accountability at every level of government, not only among employers.

If employers can face fines of up to R100 000 for violating immigration laws, public officials whose actions or omissions contribute to the same problem should face equally serious disciplinary measures, financial penalties and, where appropriate, criminal prosecution.

Accountability begins with government and the effective implementation of our laws in accordance with the Constitution.  **| MOHAMED SAEED **Pietermaritzburg

Born here, welcome nowhere

I’ve heard both sides of the xenophobia debate. South Africa has extremely high unemployment, while immigrants, both legal and illegal, are accused of stealing jobs, committing crime, and overloading schools with the children of immigrants born here. On the other hand, xenophobia is described as racist violence and scapegoating, with foreigners not being the main cause of unemployment and crime. Even if they leave, we will still have our own criminals to deal with.

In the end, however, history will judge us harshly. I think of the thousands of Malawians camped out in Sherwood, Durban, fearing for their safety from angry mobs. Malawian misery forms a type all by itself. Paupers can be found in every country, but an entire nation of paupers is rare, and there is not enough time here to explain the country's social condition. Its miseries and sufferings are countless. Day by day, more and more people, without money, credit or anything left to sell, go hungry. We can all see that the mothers and fathers of hungry children become increasingly willing to risk crossing the border illegally, obtaining false documents in some cases, and sending money back home. I would argue that whatever falsehoods are in those documents are not falsehoods in their hearts. That is a separate debate between the letter and the spirit of the law.

Among the young who are still growing, deterioration from hunger is rapid. Few seem to have thought about this starvation process, with skin stretched so tightly across the chest that every ridge and valley of the ribs stands out in stark relief. No words can adequately describe the appearance of hungry children. We are contributing to this process, and I think few have considered it.

Yes, relief food will be sent to Malawi and Zimbabwe, but we know corruption will prevent much of it from reaching the hungry. What South Africa is effectively doing is levelling Malawi and Zimbabwe to an equality of destitution. What is happening right now is an unbelievable and incomprehensible story of millions of people, once under South Africa’s protection, being sent home to poverty or starvation.

Tailors, shoemakers, skilled mechanics, educated white-collar workers and other artisans are terrified and are fleeing the country in droves.

I leave us with the words of Charles Dickens: “If any class deserves to be protected and assisted by the government, it is that class who are banished from their native land in search of the bare means of subsistence.”

To the little boy going home with his parents, I hope he is welcome back one day. ** | PHILIP WEDGE** George

DAILY NEWS

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