AfricaIs aCountry

Africa’s World Cup

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Africa’s World Cup

By
Sean Jacobs

Binyavanga Wainaina and Teju Cole are among those on a panel discussing the historic 2010 World Cup to be held in South Africa; the first time on the continent.

Ghana, who has qualified for the World Cup in South Africa, playing the Czech Republic in the 2006 World Cup in Germany (Wiki Commons).

When FIFA, the world football (read: soccer) governing body, awarded the World Cup to South Africa in May 2004, Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratic president spoke for a lot of his compatriots and millions on the continent when he exclaimed: “I feel like a 15 year old.”

Africa has historically been shunned by world football – viewed mainly as a cheap source of talent for Europe’s football leagues. Expectations are therefore high for what will be Africa’s first World Cup tournament. So are debates, not just about the football, but also about its wider significance: whether about development, nation building, identity, expression, politics, history, media images, or consumption.  To discuss this, I put together panel of experts – journalists, writers and academics – to unpack these and other questions. My workplace, The New School, will physically host the event.

The panelists for our event are the writers Binyavanga Wainaina, Teju Cole and the journalists Austin Merrill and Tony Karon. Binyavanga, of course, wrote the viral essay “How to write about Africa,” and founded the literary magazine, Kwani!, while Teju wrote a short travelogue about his time back in Nigeria.  Tony is a South African journalist and editor who writes regularly about football (see here, here and here). Austin is responsible for Vanity Fair’s increased focus on football culture.

They’re also all fans of the beautiful game.

Update: May, 18, 2010. The video of the event is now live on The New School’s Youtube channel.

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.