Super-exploitation- feel it, it is here! We expose how imperialism are the main beneficiaries of the 2010 Fifa World cup.The capitalist media have run a 6 year campaign, sweeping up the middle class and the working class with it about the supposed benefits of the Fifa 2010 soccer world cup in South Africa. The efforts the imperialists have put into promoting the world cup is much like they do when they sweep up the nationalist sentiments in a population to support fascism. Cosatu leaders served on the cup organizing committee, providing the perfect cover for the imperialists to plunder the country in broad daylight. Despite many thousands of workers putting themselves into debt to buy tickets (partly as a result of the support by the Cosatu leaders of the cup), the capitalists still could not fill the stadiums. The SACP and their fraction in the leadership of Cosatu were pushing for ‘labour peace’ during the world cup but they were defeated by the workers on strike in the municipal and dock and rail sectors. The SACP leaders were not completely defeated; these leaders still managed to postpone/call off the general strike action against the electricity hikes (the massive attack on the working class of a 34% increase in tariff has come into effect on 1 July despite a scheduled meeting of the capitalists, government and worker leaders on 14th June 2010 to ‘negotiate’ over it). The first point that we can learn from the world cup is that in general, if the capitalist wants to sell something, they will paint it in rosy colours, exaggerating its qualities, until they have your money in hand; afterwards, when negative sentiment arises, the capitalists will even make money out of this. Thus the national soccer team was painted in advance as potential ‘world beaters’; some soccer players were even compared to Einstein. The very capitalists who could not be bothered how workers get home from work and that millions of workers spend hours getting to and from work on a public transport system that woefully inadequate, suddenly became the ‘champions’ of public transport, creating a special transport system (with the help of their lackeys, the SA government) of buses every 5 minutes and trains running up to 2am in the mornings, so that the capitalists could efficiently rake in the billions of profits from the cup. The national flag was promoted as a symbol of ‘unity of the nation’. We will show here that the national flag really represents capitalist imperialist interests and that there is a fundamental divide in society between the working class, the majority, and the handful of capitalists. Counting the costs The Athlone stadium was upgraded at a cost of R400 million and used only once, for one day, during the world cup. While most of the public hospitals have run out of essential medication for TB, heart illness, diabetes, etc, the new 2010 medical units for the soccer millionaires, lie largely unused and full stocked. It takes months to get an appointment for an operation but all operations set for the days of world cup matches, were postponed at facilities deemed by the Fifa gangsters to be made exclusively available for the soccer prima donas. Millions of bafana bafana T-shirts, vuvuzelas and SA flags, made in the US imperialist slave camps in China, were sold to the masses at 10 times the real price. Not only did the masses sacrifice to pay for the high cost of the tickets but once inside the stadiums and fan parks, they were forced to pay 3 times the cost of the usual high price for food. Considering the real cost of a housing unit ( and not the over-inflated prices) of R40 000, it would have been possible to build an extra 2.5 million housing units; thus it would have been possible to have wiped out the problem of homelessness within 6 years; it was a conscious choice to keep the masses in a state of desperation and homelessness to maintain a climate in which speculatively high prices can be charged for housing and which the banks are the main beneficiaries (through their control of land, the construction companies and through the high rate of interest they charge on loans). The major shareholders of all banks locally are the handful of parasites who control the imperialist banks, mainly in Wall street, London, Paris and Berlin. This points to who the major beneficiaries were of the 2010 world cup. The figures above exclude the over R20 bn that Fifa gains from their sponsors, the over R2 bn from the ticket sales, hospitality and licencing rights and the billions that are raked in by the parasitic betting syndicates. It also excludes billions on extra expenses on extending the police force as well as the greater militarization of the repressive apparatus, spent under the guise of the world cup but in reality preparing an iron fist to smash the growing working class discontent.
Imperialism was the biggest winner of the world cup The imperialist construction companies (Murray & Roberts, WBHO, Grinaker-LTA, Group Five, BAM-Netherlands based, Bouygues- French based) were the main instruments for taking billions in profits from the working class. We examine only one but the underlying principle is the same for them all. The main culprit among the gangsters was Murray & Roberts (which the Workers World News of ILRIG mistakenly calls ‘South African’). The main shareholders of Murray & Roberts are the wall street banks such as JP Morgan Chase, State street, SSB, etc. Even Liberty Life, which is itself imperialist controlled, is also a shareholder of Murray & Roberts. Murray & Roberts had a big share of the contracts for building stadiums, the Gautrain and other capitalist infrastructure. In 2008, Murray & Roberts has contracts of R30 bn and boasted an order book of R100bn. The publicly declared profits of Murray & Roberts for 2009 was overR2 bn (the real profits are much more; eg the fact that the Gautrain increased from R5 bn to R35 bn shows that there was massive profiteering by the capitalists). Using 2007 as a base line, the increase in dividends paid out by them increased by 69% and 88% for 2008 and 2009 respectively, and this in the period of so-called world recession. Thus even on the public level the order of the profits from one of the imperialist construction companies was billions (not millions as ILRIG understates). Meanwhile, just in the past year, over a million jobs were lost and there has been a huge nett job loss over the past 6 years. Even the capitalist ANC government admitted that many of these job losses were not even justified by capitalist standards; the ‘champions of the working class’ the Cosatu leaders merely shed crocodile tears while refusing to organise a united resistance against the capitalist onslaught. The imperialists are already making propaganda about so-called xenophobic attacks after the world cup; what they are really signalling is that they know that they have only diverted the attention of the masses for a short while from their sufferings and that the masses will soon take the path of mass resistance, as shown in Greece and Kyrgyzstan; the imperialists are preparing fascist gangs to divide the working class and whipping up nationalist sentiment against our fellow black slaves from the rest of Africa, as the imperialists had instigated in 2008 when the Zimbabwean masses were on the point of a revolutionary overthrow of imperialist lackey Mugabe. The major beneficiaries of the 2010 world cup are the imperialist banks. The ANC-SACP-Cosatu leadership, by their role in promoting the world cup, are nothing but the lackeys and agents of imperialism. The working class needs to break with the bourgeoisie; this means breaking with the alliance with the pro-imperialist ANC and SACP and the building of a revolutionary working class party as part of a revolutionary International; for us this is the refounding of the Fourth International. Super-exploitation- feel it, it is here! 1.7.2010 |