Sport is still big business in SA it seems, with some of our slim economic pundits skeeming that the IPL, the Lions Tour, and the Confederations Cup have all played a moerse role in South Africa staving off some of the effects of the global recession.

If you were watching the rugby on TV over the weekend, you’d have been forgiven for thinking there were lank empty seats at Ellis Park. The red wasn’t the colour of the seats – it was the colour of all the Lions supporters. Tickets for the British & Irish Lions series were fixed at R1140 per ticket, which is klomp geld for your gewone South African. Come on SA Rugby! How can we ensure home ground advantage when you’re pricing us out of our stadiums?

The explanation being given by the organizers of the Confed Cup for the empty seats at the ‘sold out’ games is that they were block bookings by corporates who didn’t pitch to collect their tickets on the day.

Jou Ma was at the Bafana vs Brazil game and saw so many soccer-mad laities hanging around the ticket office ahead of the game, hoping for a ticket. It’s a disgrace that our footballing powers that be haven’t yet devised a system that sees uncollected tickets going on sale for cheap just before the start of the game.

Our stadiums should be full to capacity with local fans in the build up to 2010. Everyone should get a smaak of soccer in our country. When Paul Simon played in SA in the early 90s, people thought that music could unify our nation. However it was victory at the Rugby World in SA in ’95 – and then victory in the African Cup of Nations at home a year later – that cemented sport as the unifying, ‘feel good’ factor all of us in the Rainbow Nation schmaak the most to share and enjoy together.

Next year the Rainbow Nation will soon find its pot of gold, thanks to FIFA and the global affirmation that our country is safe enough to host the 2010 World Cup. The Confed Cup has been a moerse learning curve for Danny Jordaan’s Local Organizing Committee (LOC), our government, and the South African public at large.

Along with security, transport is the biggest headache that needs to be solved ahead of 2010. Forget about Jozi’s Gautrain and the Rapid Transit System in Cape Town – even just the ‘Park & Ride’ busses to the Confed Cup stadiums was a joke. So many mense missed the start of some of the games, and were then left stranded in long queues at the end.

So ja, our 2010 pot of gold must be protected so that any money we do make (once FIFA has flown home to Sweden with all of the loot from the TV rights) is spent on real ‘legacy’ stuff, like a proper transport infrastructure and better stadiums that will actually get used in the future.
Ah yes, ‘the future’. Most of us South Africans haven’t even thought of a future beyond 2010. We’re too busy blowing our own vuvuzelas to hear the warning sounds coming from a world being radically affected by global climate change.

Already ouens here are talking about how JZ has underwritten our sporting bids to host either the 2015 or 2019 Rugby World Cups to the tune of R1 billion and R1.2 billion respectively. And while Jou Ma is just as sports verskrik as the next ‘Saffer’ (the dubious abbreviated nickname we’ve earned overseas), I can’t help being reminded of how Julius Caesar used to distract the citizens of Rome from the poor job he was doing by constantly organizing gladiatorial battles and chariot races in the Colosseum.

Cape Town’s most controversial coloured, Herschelle Gibbs, calmed down for long enough to ensure his IPL franchise, the Deccan Chargers, won the tournament we hosted at full houses around the country. Then Bafana Bafana restored some more pride with a committed performance in front of plenty of fans during the Confed Cup.

On the weekend the Springboks saw red in the stands at Loftus, but still managed to klap the Lions in the Second Test, thus taking the series. We have a lot to be proud of as a sports-loving nation. That doesn’t mean we can afford to take our eye off the ball that is the economic and social reality of our lives.