SOUTH AFRICA has experienced “an extraordinary revival of its national spirit” since the Fifa World Cup began in the country 10 days ago, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said yesterday.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who in recent months has bemoaned the country’s high crime rate and castigated South Africans over their poor race relations, said the nation should collectively pat itself on the back for the manner in which it has hosted the World Cup and find a way to sustain the goodwill generated.
South Africans from different ethnic groups, he said, had put aside their cultural differences and unified as tournament hosts to a greater extent than when former president Nelson Mandela was released from prison 20 years ago at the end of apartheid.
“Over the past few weeks South Africa has experienced an extraordinary revival of its national spirit,” Dr Tutu told reporters in his home city of Cape Town.
“We were not only ready to host the World Cup, as far as infrastructure was concerned, but also in terms of our self-belief and self-esteem as a nation. We are hosting the greatest World Cup in history, and we are doing it in style.”
Dr Tutu went on to say that while the country’s millions of poor would probably draw little comfort from the improved infrastructure the government has fast-tracked, he insisted “man doth not live by bread alone”.
“We are deserving of more than a pat on the back. According to media reports, more than 400,000 visitors have already arrived, with a second wave to come. The international media is awash with positivism about us. They really do see us as the beautiful butterfly that we have become,” he said.
However, the 76-year-old urged the nation not to waste the goodwill they had created and called on people to stimulate a national dialogue on how to sustain the extraordinary spirit that had emerged and make the World Cup “not an end, but a new beginning”.
“Imagine if we could build 50,000 World Cup legacy homes across our country, or 5,000 new sports fields, or 500 schools or 50 clinics,” he said.