He is no naïf, and his eyes are anything but wide, as anyone who has read his new book, Ways of Staying, can attest. Journalist Kevin Bloom sees his country, depicts his country, South Africa, in raw and honest terms, and back home it has caused quite a stir.
But there is also an underlying sense of hope in what Bloom writes and in what Bloom says, little shafts of daylight that can’t help but poke through the gloom. It is the nature of the place and of its people.
“South Africa has the ability to galvanize itself around an event,” he says over coffee. “We are a manic depressive nation. In democratic terms, we’re a 16 year old. We are volatile teenagers. We can get depressed real easy. But we can also get excited real quick.”
And so it will be, Bloom fervently hopes, with the coming World Cup, by the far the biggest sporting event to take place on the African continent, a landmark moment in South Africa’s history which is being greeted by the outside world with equal parts joy and trepidation. Racial tensions in the country have spiked since the murder of white supremacist Eugene Terre’Blanche, and there are grave concerns as to whether the country’s infrastructure can handle the event, whether spectators will be safe in a place where violent crime in endemic, whether the legacy left behind will be economically ruinous.
Bloom has no illusions that the tournament will right societal wrongs, or that it will run like clockwork. “It’s not going to infiltrate the 80 per cent of the country who live on the bread line,” he says. “It’s not going to affect them at all. They don’t have FIFA’s permission to make business out of it. The wealth is going to stay with the wealthy and with the people who have got in on the deals.”
But emotionally, psychologically, even a time of great tension and uncertainty, Bloom imagines a moment like the 1995 Rugby World Cup – recently immortalized, Hollywood-style, in the film Invictus – when a sporting event suggests the best hopes for a complex, troubled place.
“[The Rugby World Cup] was probably the most moving moment in South African post-apartheid history”, Bloom says. “It was a moment where black and white South Africans glimpsed the possibility of a future that was other than history had dictated. That maybe we had a chance here. I know a lot of South Africans are quietly hoping that this will happen with the World Cup.”
Sport has always mattered to South Africans, which is why the apartheid era boycott that isolated the country, made it a pariah nation, barred it from the World Cup, the Olympic Games, from international rugby and cricket (but for a few, outlaw events), played a supporting role in bringing the apartheid system down.
South Africans and so many others rejoiced when the country was welcomed back into the world sporting community. At the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Nelson Mandela was on hand to watch the first black South African athlete – a boxer – compete. (When asked afterwards about that momentous occasion, the old fighter seemed more concerned about what had happened in the ring than the implications outside of it: “He should have used his jab more,” Mandela said.)
Individual South African athletes, who had long been tarred with the sins of the apartheid system, competed proudly under the new flag. The country’s qualification for the 1998 World Cup in France was a triumph. And in rugby, a traditionally white sport, the Springboks’ victory on home soil in 1995 was transformed (no small thanks to Mandela) into a moment of near universal celebration, crossing the great racial divide.
Soccer has historically been the sport of black South Africans, and there remains a great divide. “Black South Africans support Kaiser Chiefs and Orlando Pirates,” Bloom says, referring to the two most famous professional sides in the country. “White South Africans support Manchester United and Liverpool.”
But if the national side, Bafana Bafana, can make it to the second round (home teams in the World Cup traditionally overachieve – but that said, South Africa’s play of late offers little reason for optimism), if the country can unite behind them, even just for the month of the tournament, there is the possibility of something moving, and magical, taking place. “We will have this opportunity to be optimistic about a place that we want to be optimistic about, but that’s just not letting us,” Bloom says.
That feeling won’t necessarily last, Bloom acknowledges, and he envisages significant challenges in the wake of the World Cup – a potential infrastructure collapse in a country that has overextended its limited resources to play host to the world, and old divisions reappearing once the spotlight is off. “After the World Cup, there are going to be problems,” Bloom says. “Xenophobic violence will flare up in August, once the world’s not looking any more.”
But still, there is that hope, still those flickers of light that Bloom clings to, and that are at the heart of Ways of Staying. For South Africans, black and white – and for the vast South African Diaspora – the World Cup may serve as a moment of unity, a chance to forge a single identity, a reason to keep fighting, and perhaps for some an inspiration to stay, or to return.
“Yes, it’s a violent country, yes murders are high,” he says. “But South Africans have grown up with that African sun on our backs. We understand one another’s idioms. We have a lot in common with Canadians or with Brits or with Australians. But we’re foreign here, man. You want to get home. You want to be at home.”
