LISTEN TO LOUISE HAYSOM
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Louise Haysom
Sitting in an apartment in Northwest D.C., Louise Haysom, a South African activist, discussed the impact of last year’s FIFA World Cup Soccer games on South African street vendors. “By and large, what happens is that the host cities [for the World Cup] require… an exclusion zone,” said Haysom. Exclusion zones prohibit street vendors from selling their goods and are located “in the stadiums and around the stadiums. Those are traditionally places where street traders have traded always at soccer matches. There was maybe several thousand people who actually lost their livelihoods without any compensation at all. They are simply told that if you trade there, you’re going to be arrested. And they were.”
“The majority of these traders are often woman, single-headed households,” said Haysom. “I don’t think FIFA perhaps had thought about that, but we’re trying to introduce the idea that FIFA [should] have a lot more concern around what happens to the urban poor. If they’re going to take people’s jobs, that they think about how to rather give people support in building their incomes, rather than taking them away.”
“[When] you’re a street vendor, you don’t earn very much. When they confiscate your goods, it’s really very serious… What happens when you take incomes away from the urban poor, who are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS? Who are the breadwinners of households?”
“Big business will not usually take into consideration what the real costs are of actually holding these games. Social activism and raising awareness is really quite important. As much as one loves soccer… the issue is, ‘What is the real price that you pay?’ [It’s important] to make sure that the real benefits do come to everybody, not just a few international companies who are licensed by FIFA to advertise and to sell beer and so forth, which is what happens.”
“I went to one match, so I can say how wonderful it was. It was really incredible to be in the stadium… [But] how do you end up spending these billions of rand on stadiums?… Economists need to make that proper assessment: ‘Is it worth it?'” You can’t answer that question, said Haysom, “without looking at what is happening to the people who are frequently moved to yield up this beautiful, clean type of city where there are no poor people, there are no street children… there are no homeless people in our city. Meantime, people have been moved… There’s records in Cape Town of a lot of people being evicted to accommodate soccer players and so forth.”