What legacy for South Africa's World Cup?

The 2010 FIFA World Cup finals in South Africa promises to be a dramatic, colourful, noisy vuvuzela-fuelled football party- but just how much of a hangover the party leaves in South Africa remains to be seen.
The visit of FIFA’s quadrennial hyper-event to the African continent is the culmination of a long-standing ambition to bring the World Cup to the world. The first fourteen World Cup finals series were played in Europe or Latin America. Since 1990 only two tournaments have been played in Europe, with North America, Asia and now Africa getting their place in the sun. What seems, on the face of it, to be a laudable attempt to spread the riches is, in actual fact, rooted in a lengthy history of political chicanery.
International football was traditionally organised along disciplined, introverted British-style bureaucracy. All that changed in the 1970s. The notorious João Havelange engineered his way to the FIFA hotseat in 1974 by courting the countless ‘lesser’ FIFA members who had long been ignored by the establishment. Havelange gained power by lining up the votes of African, Asian, Oceanic and Caribbean countries with the promise of financial and political support (which he duly delivered). By essentially buying the practically disenfranchised smaller member he forever shifted the political balance in world football.
Under Havelange FIFA morphed into the monstrous money-making machine it now is, while the World Cup became a commercial extravaganza non-paraleil. Giant multi-nationals were courted and signed up as official partners and TV rights were auctioned for obscene amounts as the World Cup was expanded to finance a circus of decadent politics, to the degree that the football almost became secondary. A particular low point was reached when Switzerland, as part of a potential bid for the 1998 World Cup, proposed to nominate FIFA- and Havelange- for the Nobel peace prize.
Around the world political considerations continue to colour the running of the competition. In the North/Central American region the unique and malevolent influence of Jack Warner, and the requirement to ensure that the great untapped market of the USA qualifies, ensures that the relatively weak Concacaf retain their ludicrous three and a half World Cup berths. Similarly, politics dictates that Oceania, shorn of its only moderate football talent in Australia, still gets a guaranteed World Cup playoff place and a place at the Confederations Cup, ensuring New Zealand’s place in both. Current FIFA big-wig Sepp Blatter is on record as saying that any confederation that performs particularly well at a World Cup could be rewarded with extra places. Perhaps someone should tell FIFA that all four semi-finalists in 2006 were from Europe.
What the long term legacy of the World Cup will be for South Africa is far from clear. The country was required to commit billions of dollars on security and administration and to upgrade infrastructure and facilities. While a portion of ticket revenue helps the organising committee to cover costs the majority of tickets sales and every last penny of commercial income goes straight out of the host country and back to FIFA. The host country has the opportunity to get tourists into the country and to showcase itself to the world. This multi-billion dollar promotional gamble is justifiable in Germany, Korea and Japan or the US, but less so in what is essentially a developing economy in South Africa, in a recession.