It's Monday

And I have a gripe.

Does all the 2010 World Cup preparation going on, partcularly the bits that have nothing to do with stadium building, sometimes annoy you? It annoys me, and I'll tell you why. It's a really obvious point that no-one seems to want to make (or made jonks ago and is now bored with), and that also annoys me.

South Africa is building and developing and establishing all kinds of things, in the name of the World Cup, which need to be built anyway. Not just roads and airports (actually the new Durban airport SA does not need, especially since it's much more expensive for airlines compared to the existing one), new mass transit systems, or dressed up public spaces in Soweto and other not-so-pretty parts of urban South Africa, but promises of more effective policing, traffic control, attention to human safety, better municipal services, a steady electricity supply, Telkom's promise of uninterrupted broadband and broadcast services, and so on. Telkom's advertss bragging about all they're doing for FIFA (their words) really grate my carrot. Do it for your paying customers you bunch of lazy-ass monopolists!

The most annoying recent announcement: a new nerve centre to track and remedy literally anything that goes wrong during the World Cup. In other words, a functioning call centre for emergencies. Um, ja, we already have that hotline and that fancy call centre in Midrand, but it doesn't seem to work very well.

Why do we need a World Cup to do all these things? I'm vey happy the country is making changes, and even more happy that we seem to have the financial resources to make them. But I'm very annoyed that the impetus behind them doesn't seem to exist without the prospect of hosting a major world event on the horizon, and the world attention that comes with it. We're only doing these things either because FIFA says we must, or because we're worried that outsiders will develop a bad opinion of the country (or develop further pre-existing prejudices).

I can think of lots of reasons why South Africans are more worried about what Europeans think of it than what South Africans think of it. I am also aware that some first world countries suffer similar problems. But none of this makes me less annoyed.