Spotlight on Terre'Blanche, Threats Typical of World Cup 2010 Coverage

On Saturday, political leader Eugène Terre'Blanche was murdered in South Africa.

With respect, political leader is a generous term.  Terre'Blanche was a white supremacist and one of the vocal leaders of the movement to maintain white rule in South Africa at the end of the apartheid era.  Since, he had led a movement (the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, or AWB) to create an independent state for Boers and Afrikaners.

On Saturday, Terre'Blanche was murdered by two of his farm laborers - two black men.  The mother of one of the suspects - a 15-year-old boy - claims the murder was the result of a pay dispute.  

Since the event, there has been growing tension in South Africa, causing president Jacob Zuma to call for unity, while Terra'Blanche's extreme party has issued and then retracted a threat of revenge.

Far be it for something as potentially explosive as this event to be cast in soccer terms, but amidst the confusion of a country dealing with this explosive event, the South African Institute on Race Relations has commented on how this event effects the World Cup.

From the Associated Press:

"There is no reason why these things, as tragic as they are, should affect the safety of fans or players at the World Cup," [Lawrence Schlemmer, vice president of the South African Institute of Race Relations] said. "The World Cup and sport, as it is supposed to, channels passions and reconciles conflict."

Where there people out there who thought the murder of a right-wing, white supremacist leader could have an effect on their World Cup experience?

I find that absurd, but I also find it par-for-the-course with much of the coverage we've gotten of South Africa's preparations for this summer's finals.  We know that the preparations for 2010 aren't exactly going as smooth as Germany's for 2006, but the continued refrain of violence - potential physical threat to this summer's visitors - has gone too far, particularly if the refrain is being implicitly resurrected in the context of the Terre'Blanche story.

And if it is not being resurrected by whomever is questioning Schlemmer, then Schlemmer is pro-actively addressing the concern.  That may be even more troublesome:  The thought of "Oh boy, we better get in front of this story."

Of course, it doesn't help South Africa when people within their country are playing to these fears:

AWB general-secretary Andre Visagie said the killing of Terreblanche was a "declaration of war" by blacks against whites in South Africa.

Visagie said his group would tell teams to reconsider their participation in the World Cup.

"We're going to warn those nations, 'You are sending your soccer teams to a land of murder,"' Visagie said. "Don't do that if you don't have sufficient protection for them."

I don't have anything in common with Eugène Terre'Blanche.  You don't have anything in common with him.  Andre Viagie certainly does, but despite his claims, there is no reason to think we are exposed to the same dangers as Terre'Blanche.

This story's relation to the World Cup is the logical extension of an absurd premise.  That premise:  You, a visitor to South Africa, are in significant danger, and the media needs to let you know.

Murder rates in South Africa are a serious and tragic problem, and the focus of the World Cup could have started an intelligent discourse regarding causes and potential solutions.  At least, it could have raised the world's attention, and while the World Cup build-up has seemingly done that, it has done so by unfairly demonizing the country with an undertone of "you will be killed if you go."

But let's be clear on the scope of this problem.  When I imply murder rates are troublesome, I'm speaking relatively.  Granted, any murder is a problem absolutely, but when you're talking about a 0.05 percent homicide rate, your personal danger level as a two-to-four week visitor is inexplicably low.  South Africa's homicide numbers are troublesome when compared with the standards of the England, Italy, and the rest of Western Europe (we'll leave the U.S. out of this), but were this story cast in terms of your personal danger level, this blog post would have probably never happened.

The murder rates in South Africa are still a problem, but they are also dropping:  8.5 percent over the last five years.

And in truth, there is no country in the world where the murder rate is so high that this much paranoia should have been allowed to perpetrate.  At some point, somebody should have said something naively correct, like "50 out of 100,000 - that seems like a long shot."

Of course, instead of talking about what South Africa can do to lower that number, we're focusing on how the number affects a soccer tournament.  And now we're linking in the murder of a white supremacist.

A long time ago, this story ran far off course.