Bri­an Lewis

Mor­gan Free­man, the Amer­i­can ac­tor who played Nel­son Man­dela in In­vic­tus, the movie about the uni­fy­ing force of South Africa's vic­to­ry in the 1995 rug­by World Cup tri­umph, said dur­ing din­ner in a Jo­han­nes­burg restau­rant "that once again I've seen here the pow­er of sport to unite and lift peo­ple." Free­man was mak­ing ref­er­ence to what he was wit­ness­ing at the FI­FA World Cup–the first ever held in Africa. The Pow­er of Sport can­not be de­nied. Spain, win­ners of their first World Cup in 90 years, will be cel­e­brat­ing for days and months to come, nine decades in the mak­ing. Their foot­ball youth sys­tem, pa­tient and res­olute, has de­liv­ered the cov­et­ed crown. That FC Barcelona's foot­ball acad­e­my sys­tem can take cred­it is an­oth­er com­pelling and pow­er­ful af­fir­ma­tion of the pow­er of sport. Rosa Gil, a ra­dio pre­sen­ter from Barcelona, was moved to ex­claim that she has nev­er seen so many Span­ish flags wav­ing in Cat­alo­nia.

The World Cup fi­nal was de­scribed as a rare mo­ment of na­tion­al uni­ty, de­spite strong move­ments for Basque and Cat­alon­ian re­gion­al au­ton­o­my. Gil sug­gest­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Jose Luis Ro­driguez Za­p­a­tero learn a les­son from Spain's man­ag­er Vi­cente Del Bosque, who had done more for Spain than all the politi­cians put to­geth­er. Spain's vic­to­ry was al­so a much-need­ed morale boost to a coun­try where 20 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is un­em­ployed. "It's free hap­pi­ness, you don't have to pay any­one for it," said Is­abel De Min­go, a 30-year-old civ­il ser­vant whose salary was cut by five per cent be­cause of the aus­ter­i­ty plan. South Africa faced enor­mous neg­a­tiv­i­ty in the lead up to the June 11 open­ing, the crit­i­cism at times so fer­vent one could not help but won­der about the un­der­ly­ing rea­sons.

Nonethe­less, the venues were com­plet­ed in time. Vis­i­tors were made wel­come and en­joyed them­selves. Fears that tourists could fall vic­tim to the coun­try's high in­ci­dence of crime were un­found­ed.

Re­ports sug­gest one mil­lion World Cup tourists came to South Africa, which was dou­ble the ex­pect­ed num­ber. What hap­pened to all the crime?

Ac­cord­ing to cred­i­ble re­ports, South Africa is at the bot­tom of the crime rank­ings in the 133-na­tion World Com­pet­i­tive­ness Sur­vey.

On an av­er­age day 100 peo­ple are raped, 50 are mur­dered and there are 550 vi­o­lent as­saults. Dur­ing the World Cup crime was down 90 per cent. "It has been an in­cred­i­ble jour­ney. This World Cup has been about na­tion-build­ing; see­ing a co­he­sive, non-racist, non-sex­ist South Africa. When you look at the sta­di­ums, every kind of South African has been present. Every­one has been part of the show," said Dan­ny Jor­daan, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the World Cup or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee.

In­dia, Sin­ga­pore, Brazil, Chi­na and oth­er am­bi­tious na­tions have em­braced the op­por­tu­ni­ties that can be found in sport. De­vel­oped na­tions such as the USA, UK, France, Ger­many, Hol­land, Japan, and Rus­sia need no con­vinc­ing. The Barcelona Olympic Games was a pos­i­tive and trans­for­ma­tion­al cat­a­lyst for the city of Barcelona. It did not hap­pen overnight, it took vi­sion, ded­i­ca­tion and imag­i­na­tion.

Madi­ba Mag­ic. Wa­ka Wa­ka. Spain and South Africa are to­day cel­e­brat­ing, yet again, the pow­er of sport. The pow­er of sport–striv­ing for ex­cel­lence, striv­ing for im­prove­ment, the pas­sion to be bet­ter to­day than you were yes­ter­day, the pas­sion that dri­ves a peo­ple and a na­tion to reach be­yond their lim­i­ta­tions and in­se­cu­ri­ties, the imag­i­na­tion to dream big dreams, the vi­sion to be Olympic and world class; the faith, courage, per­se­ver­ance, de­ter­mi­na­tion and pa­tience to rise above ad­ver­si­ty, mis­takes and short­com­ings. Over the years, we in T&T have had our pow­er of sport mo­ments. The sad fact is we cel­e­brat­ed but then did noth­ing else to build on the op­por­tu­ni­ties. All we did was talk, par­ty and Dun­ning-Kruger the mo­ment.