The cost of sport: The World Cup and South Africa’s poor

The charity War on Want says that, while South Africa has spent £4.1 billion on preparations for the World Cup, the plight of the country’s poor has grown worse.

War on Want has launched a three-minute video (above) highlighting the problem. The film, says the charity on its website, “shows what many of South Africa’s poor think about the World Cup. Through a series of interviews with people affected directly by the games, including those displaced to remote transit camps, our film offers a new perspective on the world’s most widely viewed sporting event.” The organisation is also asking people to sign its call to the South African High Commission. “Led by War on Want’s grassroots partners, a growing movement of South Africans are fighting evictions and the denial of public services, such as water and electricity,” the organisation says. Millions of South Africans, it says, “suffer from appalling living conditions. Whole communities are denied access to essential public services, and many thousands of people have been evicted from their homes.” Sleeping on the streets The religious think tank Ekklesia expresses some concern, too, in its own report on the video. “The three-minute film includes still pictures of homeless women forced to sleep on the streets after they were evicted from a hostel in the grounds of Somerset Hospital in Cape Town. The BBC is using the hospital roof for its World Cup studio,” it says. Cynthia Twigg, a Blikkiesdorp resident, says: “The government has got lots of money to build stadiums. But they haven’t got money to build us houses. I think only the rich of the government will benefit – not us.” And another shack dweller, Jane Roberts, says the authorities have moved some people from the streets into Blikkiesdorp so that tourists would not see them.