South Africa one year after hosting the FIFA men’s World Cup is “a similar country, still struggling with inequality and a fragile infrastructure,” according to the N.Y. TIMES MAGAZINE’s Eve Fairbanks, who writes under the header “Overtime In Soccer City: South Africans Believed The World Cup Would Bump Their Country Into The First World. So Did It?” Many South Africans “imagined that hosting the tournament would create big, visible benefits, turning the country decidedly, glamorously first world … nearly overnight.” But in a recent poll, 70% of South Africans said that they “now believe the World Cup actually brought the country economic disadvantages.” The 10 host stadiums “are particular sources of dispute,” as they “mostly stand empty, already monuments.” Yet Fairbanks writes “something lingers: a sense of pride, even of nationhood.” In the same poll “in which they lamented the World Cup’s economic disappointments, 78 percent of the respondents said they thought South Africa derived ‘social cohesion’ from hosting it” (N.Y. TIMES MAGAZINE, 7/24 issue).
