SSY has already covered the world cup extensively earlier this year, and like all Scots we were also on the edge of our seats a few weeks ago, hoping and praying that England would not win the 2018 World Cup – despite the predictions of a certain deceased psychic octopus. Fortunately we were spared the inevitable comparisons to 1966 once every 3 seconds by Alan Hansen etc, and the rising power of Russia was able to claim victory as part of a bid that was based on tactical use of bribes and polonium sandwiches.

Sepp Blatter making sure those pesky gays don't steal his trophy

What’s not been in the news as much (probably cos it’s ages away) was Qatar’s successful bid for the 2022 World Cup. Their victory was surprising given that Qatar have never successfully qualified for a World Cup and have a population of only 1.7 million, making them both smaller and even shiter at football than Scotland. The most likely reason Qatar was awarded the World Cup was to raise the profile of football in the Arab and Islamic world – similar to why the USA was awarded the tournament in 1994, to open a new market for the game.

Their bid’s already causing controversy though, 12 years before it’s due to start due to Qatar’s ban on homosexuality. Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president has a handy solution to any LGBT fans who travel to Qatar to see the game – don’t get up to any gay sex. Well that’s that sorted then. His comments have already understandably created fury among LGBT football associations who want the right for their members to travel and enjoy a World Cup without the fear of being jailed just for being gay.

It’s another controversy Blatter faces alongside Fifa’s rampant corruption and his blocking of goal line technology (though we’re actually ok with that, ball never crossed the line). The bottom line is despite Qatar’s abuse of human rights, Fifa are attracted by the big bucks the Qatari state can provide. Qatar is a booming gulf state, whose wealth is based on a combination of massive oil and gas resources, and virtual slave labour. Like other GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries like Dubai, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar’s population is overwhelmingly made up of foreign workers. 37% of the population of the GCC states are made up of foreign workers and their families. 89% of Qatar’s workforce is made up of foreign workers who are paid abysmally in the construction of some of the most opulent and stunning buildings on earth.

Doha, Qatar. Brought to you by slave labour.

Alongside low paid workers, Qatar still has actual slavery. The USA has attacked Qatar for not doing enough to end human trafficking, which is punished with the same severity as selling booze (6 months in jail). This form of trafficking occurs when workers from Asia are recruited to work in projects in Qatar only to find that their wages and working conditions are worse than what was advertised. Their employers stop them from leaving by confiscating their passports – leaving them with no option but to stay in Qatar and work as virtual slaves.

Those Qataris (and European expats) who have got rich out of Qatar’s oil wealth and low paid labour are also free to take on and violently abuse servants without fear of jail or the law. Across all the GCC states there are frequent reports of maids being physically tortured by their employers. This isn’t just an Arab or an Islamic practice either, European expats in Qatar have also taken advantage of the states lack of the most basic workers rights to abuse their employees.

As SSY has previously covered, international sporting events – be it the Commonwealth Games or the World Cup – do not occur in a vacuum and they are not neutral. They are controlled by the billionaire states and multinational corporations for their own benefit, over and above the millons of people who want to enjoy the tournaments but find their homes or rights as workers in conflict with the hosts of the games. SSY hopes that by 2022 the LGBT fans and the workers in Qatar, who have already proven they can strike, will be able to enjoy the World Cup as equals and not slaves in a society where the gap between rich and poor would make Victorian Britain look egalitarian.

In the world of psychic powers, few tests come bigger than predicting the fate of humanity itself.
With Paul the Psychic Octopus making headlines around the world right now for his incredible ability to correctly predict the winner in all of Germany’s World Cup games so far, SSY got in touch with Paul for what would prove to be the ultimate test of his psychic capabilities.

Writing in 1915, the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg first raised the idea that the future of our planet lay in one of two roads: either socialism, or barbarism. Decades later, another foreign exile in Germany (Rosa was actually Polish, while Paul is actually an English octopus) was faced with a similar predicament -- a question that would put all of our eight-tentacled friend’s psychic abilities to the test, as he sought to determine the very fate of the human race.

What would Paul decide? Are we to be condemned to, as Rosa put it all those years ago, “the awful proposition: the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery” or…“the victory of socialism?”

Watch with baited breathe as Paul reveals the fate of all humanity:

Oh (oh oh oh octopus), and if you’d like to see how Paul’s World Cup final predictions pan out as well, come along to  SSY’s World Cup South Africa showdown spectacular on Sunday night! Wintergill’s Bar, Great Western Road, Glasgow from 7.30 on Sunday -- watch the game and then celebrate/commiserate the result with quality tunes from South Africa! £2/4 entry otd, lots of special prizes -- not to be missed!

Leftfield has already reported how the World Cup, far from being an economic benefit to South Africa, has in fact been a license for FIFA and international capitalism to loot the country.

Now it looks as if the full force of the law might be used to keep the electricity supply to fans’ TVs running, and prevent workers from exercising their right to strike.

Eskom is South Africa’s state owned electricity supplier, although attempts were made to at least partially privatise it in the late 1990s, meaning it operates in many ways as a private business. Eskom workers are demanding a 9% pay increase, as well as a housing allowance to help them cope with the rocketing cost of keeping a roof over their heads. The company has refused to meet their demands, offering increases in wages and allowances well below what the workers need during an economic crisis.

A strike would be unlikely to affect the actual electricity supply to the stadia themselves, as they generally have back up diesel generators. But it could affect the supply to TVs for fans from around the world who are in South Africa without tickets. More importantly for the South African economy, and global capitalism, it could disrupt platinum and gold mines, affecting the global price of these commodities.

In response to the unions pledge to push ahead with strike action next week, as the World Cup moves towards semi finals, Eskom has threatened to go to the courts and have the strike declared illegal, because electricity is deemed an “essential service”, and therefore presumably electricity workers should have no rights. “This is a country of laws and we must all abide by the laws,” said Eskom CEO Brian Dames.

The unions counter that they have tried to reach a ‘minimum service agreement’ with Eskom, meaning that non-essential workers would be able to strike while the lights were kept on. Eskom instead proposed an agreement that would have completely removed the right to strike from all workers, which the unions refused to sign.

What’s particularly ridiculous about Eskom’s refusal to budge is that its own executives have been caught out using company funds to feather their own nests. Executives are to be paid a 9.6 million Rand performance bonus, while they claim they can’t afford to pay their workers properly. They have established a R1 billion pool to fund payments to top bosses.

They’ve also spent R12.6 million on World Cup tickets for top execs.

Dames said he was appealing for “organised labour to play a part in putting our country first.”

But union spokesman Lesiba Seshoka hit back, saying: “We would like to put our country first; why don’t they put their workers first? Why are they putting themselves first?”

After the government attempted to partially privatise Eskom in the late 1990s, it refused to provide funds for the building of extra electrical power plants, meaning that there are now problems with supply leading to blackouts. A huge proportion of the poor population of South Africa continues to have no access to electricity supply.

Protesters slam rising electricity bills

During the Apartheid era, it was common for people to refuse to pay their power bills as a form of struggle against the racist and oppressive government, and to covertly connect themselves to the supply illegally. This form of struggle has seen a resurgence in recent years as the urban poor have been enraged that the impact of neoliberal economic policies means many still have no access to a proper home, electricity or clean water, and for those that do have access to utilities bills have jumped.

These policies have been implemented by the African National Congress government, which has now largely abandoned its left wing roots to become a party that only implements policies that suit South African and international capitalists. Significantly, the British bosses’ paper, the Financial Times, reckons there’ll be no strike because of the ANC. “If things aren’t sorted out by the weekend, expect party heavyweights to get involved,” they write.

The latest strike threat to the World Cup comes after the dramatic strike of stewards at stadia forced police to take over security at games. The stewards were angry that at their poverty pay at the hands of FIFA contractor Stallion Security. They linked up with community protesters who held banners demanding “World Cup for All! People Before Profit” and declaring “Apartheid Still Exists!”

Police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse strikers before taking over security themselves at games such as the first round match between Brazil and North Korea.

Workers on strike at Soccer City

The heavy handed security for the World Cup has been a scandalous issue, with FIFA using South African police as a tool to protect their own business interests, excluding anyone who wanted to expose their role, or local traders trying to make a livelihood in the zones around the stadia where FIFA has been given exclusive economic control. A local environmentalist was arrested in durban for handing out leaflets about the World Cup’s impact at a ‘Fan Fest’ event, and another man who was found with 30 tickets and “no explanation” was given three years in jail.

Stallion itself is a scandal ridden operation, after a promise by the labour minister to ban it due to its terrible treatment of workers was not fulfilled. In 2001 it was responsible for a stampede at a Johannesburg football game that left 40 dead.

Their partner as head of security for FIFA’s local organising committee is former prisons commissioner Linda Mti, who gets a cut from a notorious privatised concentration camp for immigrants who have been arrested at Lindela (as well as being a triple arrestee for drunk driving.)

Today sees the launch of the 2010 football world cup in South Africa. It’s great news for football fans, and we’re playing our part with a world cup raffle (comment if you’d like to get a ticket!) and South Africa night for the final (watch this space for details.)

But great as it might be for us on the other side of the world to get a month of football to watch, the real costs of the tournament for South Africa are getting hidden amongst the excitement.

Over the next month we’re going to be bringing you a series of articles about South Africa, its history and long political struggles for democracy and socialism that are far from over.

Twenty years ago, holding the world cup in South Africa would have been unthinkable. The world at large refused to allow South Africa to participate in most major sporting events because of Apartheid, the state enforced system of extreme racial segregation and oppression.

But with the fall of Apartheid in the early 90s, the world’s media told us South Africa’s problems were solved. There was democracy, and a government elected by the black majority was finally in power.

Since then however, South African governments have turned away from the left wing ideas that inspired many in the struggle against Apartheid, and looked to global capitalism to solve South Africa’s problems.

The result has been that the majority of South Africans continue to live below the poverty lines, with millions of homeless and low rates of access to clean water or electricity. The average male life expectancy is just 49, and there are unemployment rates of 40%.

While so much has been spent on the world cup, the government still does not provide thousands with a proper home

The government has made the world cup an important part of its economic strategy, and has spent $4.1 billion on hosting the event, more than any other country before it. A series of brand new stadia have been built, driving an economic bubble in the construction industry. However, now that the work is done, the real question is, how much will South Africa actually benefit from the world cup?

Read the rest of this entry »

You might’ve noticed the outpouring of facebook-rage/tabloid-hysteria that broke out a couple of weeks ago when it was reported that, apparently, England shirts are to BANNED during the World Cup. The rumours started from this article in The Sun, which claimed that police were advising pubs to prohibit the wearing of football shirts for reasons of safety during the tournament.

This obscure piece of police guidance on licensing was then taken massively out of context and portrayed as presumably just the latest development in the British state’s long standing war against the persecuted minority that is white, English men. Cue, seemingly hundreds of thousands of misinformed eejits jumping on a virtual bandwagon against the ‘fukin stupid ban, its PC gone mad!!1!11 I WONT REMOVE MY ENGERLAND SHIRT UNLESS THEY STOP  BEIN ALLOWD TO WEAR TURBANS AND BURKAS’, and so on, before the whole thing had become an unstoppable juggernaut of the kind of nationalism, xenophobia and anti-immigrant hysteria that’s come to be exemplified by the English Defence League.

Faced with this, almost immediately the Metropolitan Police -- where the guidance originated -- issued a stringent denial that this was ever intended as a ban on England shirts, flags or other attire. Like, duh. But it didn’t stop there -- soon enough, nearly every police force in England, from Somerset & Avon to West Midlands was being forced to issue statements that they have no intentions to ban England shirts.

It’s become deeply worrying how prevalent this sort of casual racism has become. While the BNP, what was and still to a large extent is the united party of the far-right, appears to be falling apart, the same cannot be said of the ideas they represent in society. The EDL go from strength to strength, while UKIP veer ever further towards the radical right. 600,000 people are members of a facebook group entitled ‘Its funny how our flag offends you but our benefits dont!’. It’s a well-worn tabloid narrative that the ‘PC Brigade’ are determined to clamp down on ‘national pride’ -- to the extent that now The Sun only has to drop the merest hint that this is taking place before it sparks another outbreak of BAN OUTRAGE hysteria. And it’s endemic of the constant media-lies and scapegoating of Muslims that within hours, somehow ‘the Islamics’ were being blamed for this obscure piece of guidance, apparently written by one police officer, intended for licensed premises.

Now, however, it has emerged that there is more to the story than first meets the eye. A local newspaper in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, reports that someone has been going round, purporting to be a Police Community Support Office, and asking people to remove England shirts and take down flags. So who could this bogus police officer be? Surely our tabloid media would not stoop to that low in a shameless bid to generate some cheap headlines about ‘PC PCs’ being a bunch of killjoy England-haters? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve attempted such a stunt: a few years back it emerged that The Daily Mail was offering money to Polish people to  drive Polish cars to Britain and then proceed to break UK traffic laws, with a Mail photographer conveniently in tow. Hmm… tabloid media stirring up racial tensions and scapegoating minorities? Who would have thought it.

ABOVE: exclusive footage Leftfield uncovered of a recent Sun editorial meeting