The 2010 World Cup in South Africa: A Millennial Capitalist Moment

South Africa's hosting of the 2010 World Cup resulted in billions of Rand being spent on event-related infrastructure. Politicians and event organisers justified the spending as a necessary investment in the future of the country. The hosting of the 2010 World Cup was presented as a turning-point in the country's fortunes that would bring economic prosperity with it whilst helping to unite a once-divided nation. However, protests from workers' unions, civil society movements and victims of forced evictions testified to a different measure of the event's impact. To these parties, cheap Chinese imports and FIFA trading restrictions threatened any potential benefit to the South African economy, while forced evictions and poor living conditions focused attention on the alternative causes to which those resources could have been applied. This article seeks to analyse the arguments of both the proponents and protestors of the event using as its framework the concept of ‘Millennial Capitalism’ developed by Jean and John Comaroff. From this perspective the 2010 World Cup represented a national sacrifice of resources on infrastructure, tickets and trinkets in exchange for a momentary feeling of national unity and the realisation of economic prosperity for a select few, most of them outside South Africa. This article contributes to critiques of neo-liberal capitalism by illustrating how decisions to host mega-events demand sacrifice by all in order to reinforce the power and interests of a select and privileged group.