World Cup Competition off-the-pitch

Am writing this post as the plucky Bafana go one up against the pitiful French. After the Henry affair, no prizes for guessing where my sympathies lie. I have been so far mostly watching the world cup on the BBC’s Match of the Day program and have been mightily impressed by thier welcome efforts to raise awareness about issues of poverty, inequality, discrimination and the shameful injustice of apartheid.

Alan Shearer has been dispatched as a no-nonsense interviewer and he has a refreshingly honest, unpretentious, from-the-hip style. Their short reports on the Robbin Island soccer team and the plight of a struggling rap artist from the townships were particularily good. Compare this editorial treatment to the drivel over on ITV where James “God I’m so bloody Hilarious” Cordon brings dumbed down TV to new depths of drivel (Bafana just scored again! Au revoir les Bleus).

Can the ‘real’ economy please stand up

Off the pitch, the FIFA World Cup has seen a tense standoff between South Africa's formal and informal economies as they compete for their share of the spinoffs, but declaring a winner may be hard. FIFA itself has come under serious fire for it’s heavy-handed fiscal demands - aka greed - on the South African nation.

Cities like Cape Town and Johannesburg have struggled to balance the concerns of street traders, whose livelihoods depend on selling sweets, foodstuff and other goods at transportation hubs and intersections, with the demands of hosting the international competition.

As early as 2008, city officials started relocating traders away from traditional vending areas that would be near stadiums and fan parks; the traders mobilised in response, with varying success.

South Africa's official unemployment rate is around 25 percent but independent economists put it as high as high as 40 percent, so the informal sector has been a refuge for those unable to get a steady job. The Human Sciences Research Council has estimated that the informal economy accounts for about 7 percent of gross domestic product.

“Will my children eat soccer balls?”

Renovations to Cape Town's Green Point stadium, just outside the CBD, and to the main transport hubs and the Grand Parade – a plaza opposite City Hall where vendors have done business for decades - meant informal traders were relocated, several times.

The disruptions were bad for business; the new Green Point market is expected to accommodate only about a third of the vendors who previously traded there.

In Soweto, Johannesburg, the Soccer City Traders Association had been supplying food to construction workers at the flagship stadium since work began there. When the association received an eviction notice in February 2010, it banded together with 33 other similar organizations in Gauteng Province and marched on FIFA's Local Organizing Committee (LOC) headquarters.

Carrying banners and placards with slogans like "Will my children eat soccer balls?", traders demanded formal employment opportunities with FIFA affiliates, allocated vending sites at venues, and a stop to relocations. Similar marches took place in Cape Town. 

"You feel like they are taking away your job," said Soccer City Traders Association vice-chair Cecilia Dube, a widowed mother of four who also supports her sister's children and elderly parents. "This is the only way I am getting bread on my table."

This echos a widely held opinion that the informal sector has provided economic opportunities that the formal sector has not, including better wages and independence. According to the International Labour Office, about 70 percent of South Africa's informal traders are women.

Change of fortunes 

Dube said their luck changed just five days before the World Cup started on 11 June, when the City of Johannesburg told selected traders they had been allocated space in the stadium precincts, at FIFA-branded fan fests, and public viewing areas.

"Informal traders have been trained and accredited by the City's Department of Economic Development, and these are the traders who are trading in the designated areas," said Sibongile Mazibuko, head of the City of Johannesburg's 2010 department. She said these traders were largely those who had worked in the vicinity of stadiums during construction or renovation.

FIFA regulations stipulate exclusion zones, which mean traders have to be located further afield from the stadiums and teaming crowds.

I asked a friend just returned today about the benefits of the World Cup and he was quiet clear. “Infrastructure improvements benefit us. They don’t benefit people in the townships. You can now get from the airport to the centre of Joburg by high-speed train in ten minutes or drive on a new motorway to Pretoria in 25mins – that doesn’t mean diddly squat for people living in townships without running water or toilets”.

/PC with additional info from IRIN news.

A particularly French emotion

Some time ago in HDEO I wrote about “La Honte”, which I thought meant simply “shame”, or “embarrassment”. I used it in a pub in front of a crowd of French football fans when Thierry Henry deliberately handled the ball to allow his team to score and grubbily shatter any dreams Ireland had of playing in the world cup finals. It’s also been on my mind today with the “shame” of the alleged affairs of Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, and the equal shame pertaining to the alleged hoaxers. (The Henry affair also inspired, during those haunted days, another HDEO post which reflected on more gallant times when the French fought for Ireland).

I’ve been thinking and reading about the word, and it means a lot more than I thought. It has an incredible range of meanings, with positive and negative aspects, and tells us much about the French as a race, their complex inner turmoils, their often destructive passion, their schizophrenia (think Vichy vs Resistance), their cowardliness and bravery, and their enigmatic, sometimes confounding souls.

I find it thrilling that a nation could come up with such a word, five short letters, to describe such a smorgasbord of tantalising emotional trends.

The true meaning of honte is hidden in layers of nuance. It seems to be most often used, or distinguished by its secret, social, narcissistic dimension, in both spiritual and physical terms. It is not blame, although it has aspects of that, nor is it fear, although it can appear in social phobias.

It’s simple on one hand: rage, fright, sadness, but also deeply complex and disturbing: impotency, withheld rage, despair, and emptiness. It’s older than blame, in that it’s less verbal and more sensory. It’s emotional; disinterest, malaise, fear, but its Janus face is exuberance and aggressiveness. And it’s physical: head lowered (or raised), eyes lowered, red flushes. It’s cognitive (illustrated by aggressive or demeaning internal dialogue) and manifested by swings between inhibition and exhibitionism, paralysis or wild ambition.

Some synonyms (translated from the French, so missing some nuance perhaps) show the extent of this superb word’s ambit, and apply so well to what must have gone through Henry’s mind when he was, knowingly, screwing the Irishmen for his own personal gain, dragging his (many noble) team-mates into the midden with him. It also reflects what his countrymen felt about him afterwards, the inability to rejoice, as loathsome cheating and disregard for fair play brought progress to his agenda, rather than the valour, the romance that the French are oft famed for.

Here we go: humiliation, dishonour, ignominy, infamy, turpitude, affront, snub, withering, abjection, callow self-reproach, fuss, bother, blame, repentance, shame, modesty, scruple…

On the plus side, la honte regulates social relations. It lays out limits. It exists in other cultures too, northern races use la honte to teach children not to cross icefields. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict says that cultures can even be classified in how they use la honte to regulate members of society. Asian countries use la honte, while modern European and American cultures are more cultures of blame. In ancient Greece and Japan “being caught” was more significant than what people thought of you.

When used as a restraining or inhibiting factor la honte is positive. It gives us limits without altering our personality. It prevents us from being the victim or from being either rescuer or persecutor.

La honte can save victims of humiliation and violence from descending in their turn into barbarity and chaos. Many victims of savagery have told how they managed to live the great principle of humanity thanks to their knowledge of the power of honte which kept them from succumbing to their animal instinct. La honte prevents – or should prevent - you from doing violence once you have tasted the pain of violence.

Too much honte is a bad thing. It leads to introspection, solitude, in short, a lack of trust leading to lack of friends. The opposing blades of bad honte are secret-keeping, mockery, contempt, social regression, obsessive rivalry, lying or, on the other side pride, ambition, desire. This sort of honte can destabilise and weaken a human being. It ploughs a deeper and deeper furrow into the soul, spiralling the subject ever downward to the bottom of the pit (broken ego, loss of worth, inability to love oneself, submission) or on the contrary towards dizzying heights (excessive narcissism, egomania, desire to dominate, kneejerk self-defence).

Honte doesn’t come from “doing a bad thing”. It’s far deeper, it comes from doing something unworthy, shameful. Once it forms, and becomes encysted in the personality la honte burrows into the ego, or overwhelms it with instinctive and paranoid self-defensiveness.

In David Lynch’s early film, the Elephant Man does nothing wrong but suffers from la honte. He lives hidden, humiliated, and famously cries “I am not a monster, I am a human being.” La honte makes the subject feel he has “something wrong”, like when Gainsborg sings “je suis l’homme a tete  de choux" (I am a man with the head of a cabbage). La honte can lead to low self-esteem, even self-hatred.

La honte has a purely physical dimension too, manifested in the flesh and personal hygiene. Being French (!), la honte is often associated with the sexual identity of the self in the body. La honte changes the bodily image and anchors it in the false sentiment of being dirty, ugly, monstrous, deformed.

La honte, when taken to extremes (hidden or over-exposed) signifies a deep narcissistic wound. It shrouds the body like a pimple that reddens, empties itself and sets, swelling in self-defence.

La honte is often associated with other troubles: alcoholism, addictions, depression, social phobias. Persistent honte can lead to depression and even suicide. Excessive honte sucks out the energy, replacing it with a strong sense of despair.  In such a case, the subject is urgently recommended to retreat form society and receive professional help.

The psychologist Michele Larivey says: “you don’t ever experience honte only by, or via, yourself. It’s always lived in front of others and subject to their judgement. It comes from the humiliation fed out by others and the negative judgement you carry yourself. Even if we think we cannot make la honte, we can identify the feeling, and this verification is difficult to accept. Finally, it shows us the importance, or otherwise, in our lives of people who we know see us living this shame.”

Honte spreads easily, communicated by a superiority/inferiority vertical logic. It falls on us from contact with others, and leaves us through others.

La honte shows us our true value and our place as humans in the human family. It’s about dignity, identity, and relative justice for all of us in our common humanity.

/JL

When the French fought for Ireland’s glory

Some reflections on November 1798, and why the French are right to hate Thierry Henry.

“Behold at last Frenchmen arrived among you! Brave Irishmen our cause is common. Union. Liberty, the Irish Republic. Let us march. Our hearts are devoted to you; our glory is in your happiness.”

On those words, from the declaration of an Irish Republic by General Humbert in 1798, were relations between France and Ireland predicated for over 200 years, and thus smarts the hurt that Henry has inflicted on his own nation by his sleight of hand.

The French love affair for Ireland is deep, as deep as their antipathy for our mutual foe. And – last week’s blip apart – we owe much of who we are to the French, although if they had been better sailors history might have been different.

But this musing is not about Bantry Bay. It starts with an actual French landing, in August 1798, and finishes on 19 November, the day of the death of the great Theobald Wolfe Tone. The same day, 211 years on when we had to come to terms with the death of our World Cup dreams through French treachery, as opposed to her valour.

Of course it’s not right to compare the gravity of the events, but the quote, by Tone’s own son, finds an echo in November 2009: "The next day was passed in a kind of stupor. A cloud or portentous awe seemed to hang over the city of Dublin.”

After many false dawns, the French landed in Killala under General Humbert (right). The village on the inlet was hardly the best place to launch an insurgency, but Humbert did remarkable things. To his disappointment, he was met, in Killala Bay by a few thousand-poorly equipped peasants with no prominent leaders. The French had been led to believe that the whole of Ireland would rise up and join the French once they had landed. (One supposes, given their previous inability to make landfall, we thought the day would never come).  Nevertheless, the French-Irish collaboration had immediate successes.

Humbert decided that he must advertise his presence in Ireland and fan the flame of hope that the risings of 1798 had already ignited. He chose to engage the British. He had learned of a force of 3,500 British troops advancing on his position. He surmised that he could be successful if he engaged them at Castlebar, County Mayo. Defeating the British at Castlebar, especially since the commander of the British forces was General Lake who had defeated the Irish pikemen in Wexford, would be the kind of demonstration that the Irish people needed to show that they could, with French help, defeat the British. 

With 700  French infantry cavalry and almost the same number of Irish rebels, Humbert conducted a twenty-five mile forced march through back roads to reach Castlebar. The strategy was brilliant. With only one cannon, the French overran the British and forced the British to run, leaving behind muskets, packs, cannons, flags, munitions, and even General Lake’s luggage. Known later as "The Races at Castlebar," (left) this defeat was one of the most ignominious defeats in British military history (pictured left, the Humbert Memorial, Humbert Street, Ballina, Co. Mayo, Ireland).

The French and the Irish established a provisional government in Castlebar. Then, a bit like last week, the Irish took their eye of the ball and, as we are wont to do, went on the lash. Humbert and his boys were wined and dined on a most lavish scale by the people of the Castlebar and environs. Those who did not sign up for active service came loaded with gifts of meat, butter, poultry, eggs, fish, etc., for the troops. One party came with a steer that had been cooked in a quarry near the town on heated slabs of limestone, a custom dating back to Hannibal's time. Gifts of clothing and footwear donated by merchants from Castlebar and the nearby towns also arrived.

Getting ready took time, and the British eventually encircled and defeated Humbert. Wolfe Tone’s brother Michael was hanged. At the time, Tone himself was on the way to Lough Swilly in Donegal with another French force which encountered a vastly superior English fleet.

Battle raged. Admiral Bombard nailed his colours to the mast, meaning he intended to go down fighting. The French officers urged Tone to escape in a frigate they had made ready. Remember that Tone was a VIP and more. He’d met with Napoleon several times, was a renowned writer and thinker, and at just 35 was poised to be one of the greatest Europeans of his day.

In the white heat of battle, facing defeat and almost certain death, what did Tone – a Protestant by the way -  do? Take the easy way out? A metaphorical handball? Hardly. He asked “shall it be said that I fled when the French were fighting the battles of my country? No, I shall stand by the ship”.

Such – gallantry – there’s no other word for it, leaves a huge lump in the throat. Tone commanded a battery fighting “like a lion, exposing himself to every peril” according to a 19^th century historian. “One of the most obstinate and desperate engagements which have ever been fought in the ocean,” reads an another account. “During six hours she sustained the fire of the whole fleet till her masts and rigging were swept away, her scuppers flowed with blood, her wounded filled the cockpit, her shattered ribs yawned at each new stroke and let in five feet of water…a dismantled wreck… in shreds”. (pictured, right, the memorial plaque that stands today on the spot where Tone was arrested).

Captured and towed to shore, the prisoners were marched to Letterkenny where Tone was recognised by an old college companion, an Orangeman. He was handed over to the police and bound in irons, prompting only the comment: “I feel prouder to wear these chains than if I was decorated with the star and garter of England”. He was sentenced, for his treason, to death by hanging, despite his plea to be shot like a soldier. The only slight consolation was that his skull was not to be piked in a public place.

Some mystery surrounds his death. There is a suggestion that a an assassination attempt was botched, and a bullet-wound it his neck was slashed by a blade to make the original trauma look like suicide. The generally accepted version is that Tone cut his own throat to make the hangman’s work impossible.

His wound was dressed by, of all people, a French doctor, who whispered to an attendant that any attempt by Tone to move or speak would result in instant death of the patient. Tone had written farewell to his wife and children, and making a slight movement said “I can find yet words to thank you sir. It is the most welcome news you can give me. What should I wish to live for?”

So perished Wolfe Tone. With honour and with pride. With him died the rebellion of 1798, and the name of Ireland as a nation.


/JL

La Honte de Henry

It hurts. Sweet Lord how it hurts. A night of fitful sleep punctured by dreams of a winning goal on 121 minutes has passed and it still hurts like a punch in the solar plexus. It was one of the best performances ever seen from an Irish team, men who grew from journeymen in Stoke and Wolves, to giants playing with composure and skill. The truth is we deserved it. We deserved it more than the French. And for so long we had the champagne on ice, only for the grapes to turn sour by a mind-blowing piece of cheating.

But amid all that, amid the heartache and the tears and the it’s-just-not-fair of it all, three things stand out. One, that FIFA is a farcical organisation dancing on Jules Rimet’s dream by seeding playoffs (how, I mean HOW can they justify it, other than telling the truth – that a Mondial without Ronaldo and Henry rather loses its sheen). Two, the ref had a good game, apart from the obvious. He could easily have given France a penalty late in the second half and then it would have been good night Josephine anyway.

And third, though it hurts like hell to write it, Henry did the decent thing. OK, ok, he could have run over to the referee and said no, fair cop, I handled it. But would Robbie Keane have done that? Would Bobby Charlton, the cleanest player ever? Would he f…

Henry could have done a Maradonna and been smarmy in a hand of God way but no. He went straight over to our boys and didn’t just mutter “sorry lads” and give a patronising ruffle of the hair. He sat with them, while million voices roared “CHEAT” at screens from Dallas to Darwin (I, rather pretentiously hollered “La Honte” and worse at the few Frenchies in O’Brien’s of Kiev).

After the game Henry told the press: “I said that I handled it to Richard Dunne but he said to me … you’re not the referee”. 

And Sean St Leger, who’s hip deflected the ball into the net in Croke Park put it well: “it doesn’t look great, but he’s got his team to the World Cup finals. If it had been one of our team we’d have probably done the same. The blame doesn’t necessarily fall on him, but he’s handled it. Everyone can see it around the world.”

Sometimes luck vanishes. We had ours in ’87 when Scotsman Gary MacKay put us into our first finals with a goal from nowhere on a cold night in Sofia. But we’ve had precious little since. All the way from Schillaci to Squillaci, you might say.

/JL