The opportunity for ESPN this summer in South Africa

South Africa and FIFA have assembled an impressive collection of stadiums for use this summer in the upcoming World Cup.  Four, in particular, are especially impressive.  They are the Mbombela Stadium, the Green Point Stadium, the Durban Stadium, and the Soccer City Stadium.  Of those four, the Soccer City stadium is the only renovated facility while the rest are brand new and ready just in time for the World Cup's opening kick on June 11th.  For context, here are some photos:

Mbombela Stadium

Green Point Stadium

Durban Stadium

Soccer City Stadium

With ESPN (and other global networks) providing an unprecedented amount of coverage of this year's World Cup, I simply want to receive coverage of the games, but also the real (financial, cultural, or otherwise) impact of the games on the country and people of South Africa.  So, to start, this commercial is laying it on pretty thick.

Ok, ESPN needs to hype the event and grab viewers (although that, as we saw in 2006, shouldn't be a problem).  But, I will be disappointed (like blog, The Offside Rules) if we hear nothing about the continuing human rights violations taking place in South Africa as a direct result of the World Cup.

For instance, just 12 miles from Cape Town's $585 million Green Point Stadium lies a "temporary relocation area" known as Blikkiesdorp or "Tin Can Town."  A British photographer recently published a news article in order to publicize what is basically an apartheid camp for about 15,000 people displaced because government officials did not want them surrounding Cape Town's impressive new stadium.

Tin Can Town outside Cape Town, South Africa.

According to the photographer, who doubles as an eviction activist, Blikkiesdorp is a place where you have no address (and thus, rarely can find employment), no schooling, and no health services.  This is just the tip of the iceberg, however, as food is scarce, health problems are pervasive, and a 10 p.m. curfew is maintained by armed police.

Now, the facilities here, our photographer admits, "If you compare Blikkiesdorp with slums like the ones the residents lived in before, it might look better at first." "But," he continues, "when you go there and see the oppression, you think you'd rather be somewhere with life, where you can go out after 10, cook outside, build, [and] have a registered address."

Armored police vehicles patrol the perimeter of Blikkiesdorp.

His photos were supplemented earlier this month by UK newspaper The Guardian, which chronicled Tin Can Town with input from residents.  One such resident described it thusly,

"It's a dumping place.  They took people from the streets because they don't want them in the city for the World Cup.  Now we are living in a concentration camp.  It's like the devil runs this place.  We have no freedom.  The police come at night and beat adults and children.  South Africa isn't showing the world what it's doing to its people.  It only shows the World Cup."

And another resident sums up the situation poignantly, "I know we were moved because of the World Cup.  They don't want people to see shacks on the road in South Africa.  They want everything perfect for the World Cup."

If the South African government (and/or FIFA) thinks it right to make these people invisible, then I hope that ESPN puts some of those E:60 reporters to good use to bring these kinds of images and stories to light.  Because even if Bono proudly narrates in the advertisement above that "it's not about human rights," in Blikkiesdorp, it most certainly is.