Dossier overview: Football World Cup 2006 10 july 2006 After the World Cup, the Lead-up to the World Cup: “Africa’s Calling”

A land of boundless enthusiasm for football: South African fans watch their national team play.

“The ball is round,” as Sepp Herberger, the former German national coach, once accurately observed. Yet throughout its long history, the football has certainly not always been completely round. Since the Chinese first began to kick a leather sphere stuffed with animal hair and feathers into a net 5000 years ago, “round” has been a largely relative term – even in Europe, where football was long played with a pig’s bladder covered by cow leather.

Nowadays, football in the sense of classic soccer football is preferably played with a round ball everywhere in the world. And that includes Africa. But not everyone in Africa who enjoys playing football can do it with a round ball. Why? Because many people simply cannot afford a proper football.

Football unites

Flashback: July 2004, in the Township of Uswingini in the hinterlands of Durban, South Africa: A group of journalists is visiting a kindergarten for children orphaned by AIDS, many of whom have contracted the HIV virus themselves. Once the children overcome their initial shyness, some of them begin to dance to the beat of a drum in the parched grass. Others seek direct contact with their white foreign visitors by means of a small, plastic sphere full of dents that resembles a crushed ostrich egg more than a football. But that is of no consequence. The makeshift ball is kicked back and forth enthusiastically between the children and their visitors. Shyness is finally completely overcome; the ice has been broken.

The game of football unites people – no matter what they use for a ball. All too often millions of children and young people, from Ethiopia to Senegal and from Libya to South Africa, score goals with simple ball-like objects made of scrap materials.

Football in Africa focuses on the future

Although African teams did not get far at the World Cup in Germany, enthusiasm on the “Dark Continent” has not been dampened. The period after a World Cup is also the period prior to a World Cup. And the next World Cup football championship will be held for the first time on the African Continent in 2010, in the Republic of South Africa. Moreover, the African Continental Championship – the Africa Cup – will be held in Ghana in 2008.

When Ghana lost to Brazil by a score of 0 to 3 during the round of the last 16 in Dortmund on 27 June, Stephen Appiah, the captain of Ghana’s team, lost no time in declaring, “Now we must look ahead to the Africa Cup in 2008 and the World Cup in South Africa. We will be ready.”

FIFA commits itself to development

"This will be the World Cup for all Africans" Advertisement for the FIFA World Cup in South Africa in 2010.

The World Football Association, FIFA, is also preparing for 2010. Two days prior to the finals of the 2006 World Cup, on 7 July, FIFA President Joseph Blatter, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and South African President Thabo Mbeki announced a cooperative effort looking towards 2010. This collaborative effort will involve additional partners aside from FIFA, the UN and South Africa, in order to give the World Cup in 2010 a focus on development that will broaden it beyond a festival of sport.

Africa is a global priority for the SDC, in terms of development cooperation as well as humanitarian aid. Poverty alleviation remains the primary focus of the SDC’s work in Africa. But combating HIV/AIDS and other serious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, another of the Millennium Goals, is also a major SDC concern. Of the 47 million people in South Africa alone, approximately 6 million are infected with HIV.

Football as a vehicle of information

This makes it all the more gratifying that FIFA intends to use the time leading up to the World Cup in 2010 to launch social projects and join strategic alliances to promote development. According to Federico Addiechi, director of FIFA’s Department of Corporate Social Responsibility, “Football in this context is not the goal but a means of transmitting vital information.” Consequently, FIFA is supporting an NGO known as Play Soccer, which was founded in the USA and has since become active in five African countries – Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, Zambia and South Africa. Play Soccer cooperates with UNICEF, among other organisations, and uses the game of football to carry out information and prevention campaigns focusing on HIV/AIDS and other threats to human health.

Synergies and alliances

“The spark of enthusiasm should jump from Germany to South Africa,” says FIFA Department Director Adiechi, emphasising that FIFA will not concentrate on football in the narrow sense in anticipation of 2010. Rather, enthusiasm for football will also be channelled in the direction of development by focusing on health, community development, good governance, and capacity building. The programme for the phase leading up to 2010 has not yet been worked out in detail. But it is already clear that FIFA’s activities will not be centred only on South Africa as the host country for the World Cup. Says Addiechi, “This will be the World Cup for all Africans, not only South Africans!” And last but not least, FIFA will “follow the Africa Cup in 2008 with great interest” in light of this continental perspective, and use it as an occasion to build alliances and look for synergies.

Incidentally: We did not quote Sepp Herberger in full at the beginning of this article. What he actually said was, “The ball is round so that the game can change direction.” The hope remains that the World Cup in 2010 will be the occasion for Africa to take a clear direction – towards progress.