In hosting a successful World Cup, South Africa brought light to an entire continent, writes Ayman El-Amir* A little more than two decades ago Africa was unquestionably the sick man of the world, and South Africa, still under the apartheid regime, was the sick man of the continent. Decimated by poverty, famine, disease, desertification, war, military coups, a dismal record of human rights and a lukewarm international response, Africa is emerging from the inferno and is passing confidently through purgatory after centuries of colonial ownership and decades of dictatorial rule. One of its most precious gems, South Africa, has been for one month the focus of global attention for successfully organising the quadrennial soccer World Cup. Hundreds of thousands of fans from dozens of countries around the world, in addition to hundreds of millions more who followed the games on giant public screens or on home TV sets, shared a global climate of expectations, euphoria, celebration, disappointment and the joy of watching the best talents soccer can offer compete for the prized cup. The Spanish team captured the championship and now will hold the title for the next four years. Only South Africa will retain the universal recognition and pride of having organised such a mammoth event, which has helped uplift both the image and the spirit of Africa, despite some perennial problems. Africa's predicament for most of the 20th century was a combination of post-colonial legacy and self-inflicted wounds. The history of colonial occupation and exploitation of Africa is a tale of untold suffering. However, pursuant to the 1960 UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, 32 African countries overthrew colonial rule and became independent. Yet much as the colonial era had left most African nations with poor standards of education, development, transport and communications systems, living conditions, civil and political institutions, post-colonial leadership also took its toll. Tyrannical governance, capricious economic policies, drought, mass starvation, civil wars, military coups and a galloping HIV/AIDS epidemic became synonymous with independent Africa. Except in times of crisis, foreign aid did little to improve the situation. South Africa was a different story. It was not the common example of foreign colonial rule but of settler colonialism where the white minority took roots, had all the privileges bestowed by a white government that marginalised and racially discriminated against the black and coloured majority of the country's population. It was very much like what the Franco-European colonists, the Pieds Noirs, wanted to make of Algeria. In an international climate of East-West confrontation and the drive for post-colonial hegemony, the South African apartheid regime was staunchly supported by the government of Britain and the US administration, particularly that of former President Ronald Reagan. These policies were confronted by the groundswell anti-apartheid movement, the South Africa boycott crusade, and the Free Nelson Mandela campaign. Under the weight of international pressure and the struggle launched by the African National Congress, the racist South African regime succumbed and South Africa changed. In his inaugural address in 1994 as the first president of a united, democratic and non-racist South Africa, Nelson Mandela said: "Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world." He set forth the goal of creating a "South African reality that will reinforce humanity's belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all." That was as good a motto for South Africa as it still is for the rest of the continent. Africa is fast changing. A new age of discovery is dawning on the continent, with foreign powers vying for its rich mineral resources and pristine land. China is leading the lot with multi-million dollar investments in Nigeria's proven oil reserves, copper and cobalt mining, cobalt mining and refining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, building a highway in Nigeria, a $5 billion deal to develop oil reserves in Eastern Niger and investment in copper mining in Zambia, among others. Because of many years lost to instability, natural disasters and misguided economic policies, Africa is averaging a faster rate of development than most other regions in the world. The African Development Bank predicted a 4.5 per cent growth rate for the continent's economies this year with an expected rise to more than five per cent next year, depending on economic recovery in Europe. According to the bank, African economies grew by an average of six per cent between 2006 and 2008. The World Bank also reported that Africa was rebounding from the global financial crisis, with a declining rate of poverty, thanks to "a decade of improvements in governance, favourable commodity prices, higher investment in human development, healthcare and education." At one time, Africa was notorious for totalitarian regimes, genocide and massive abuses of human rights. While the conflict in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo are living examples of the phenomenon, a recent report in National Geographic magazine has claimed that 13 African countries, one-fourth of the entire continent, can be considered as truly democratic. This is far more than the countries of North Africa or the Arab Middle East can boast. Angola and Mozambique, for decades torn by civil war and genocide, have reported improvement in their human rights records. In two rare examples, military leaders who carried out coup d'états in Mauritania and Niger handed over in the first case and have pledged to hand over in the second the reins of government to civilian administrations. South Africa itself has come in from the cold. It turned from being "the skunk of the world" to a united "rainbow nation" of many colours and races. Having achieved national reconciliation, it is leading the continent by example in economic and social development, a democratic and peaceful environment. The multitude of fans who came to South Africa and those who watched the games in their home countries reflected one thing in common, a shared desire for intercultural communication, knowledge between distant nations and a peaceful discovery of the other. South Africa shed a brilliant light on the continent. Everyone could see and recognise the rising phoenix. * The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington DC. He also served as director of the United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
