Heading the ball in Soweto: Approximately 483,000 soccer fans are expected to invade Brent Stirton
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A couple of miles beyond the 900-foot-high bungee-jumping tower, past the $100 million, 235-shop Maponya Mall, and a short cab ride from the 94,700-seat World Cup soccer stadium, Sakhumzi Maqubela stands before his restaurant contemplating a question on the economy.
It's a pristine day in Soweto, the late part of the midweek lunch rush, the place about half cleared out. Tourists, hiding from the sun under red Coca-Cola umbrellas, pick at plates of tripe or chicken curry as the voices of costumed tribal singers drift across a patio. "It is nice sometimes when you don't understand that you are supposed to be worried," says Maqubela, a cheerful man with close-cropped hair, crisp chinos, and a pressed yellow shirt. "We kept asking, 'What is this "reception" they are talking about?' "
This is Maqubela's way of saying that while the recession that spread across the world in 2008 did reach South Africa last year, it was more of a ripple than a wave. Sakhumzi Restaurant, the tiny eatery he started eight years ago, is now a thriving 450-seat diner with 48 workers. The mild downturn didn't much clip the wings of his corporate clients or cause many of his package tour customers to cancel their visits. "We basically never felt the recession here," he says.
In 1992, on my first reporting trip to South Africa, Soweto was a raw slum of open sewers and shacks jammed with 1 million people—the seething epicenter of black revolt against the white apartheid government. Raids by the white regime were as common as they were unpredictable; murderous tribal and ethnic political conflicts made it a dangerous place to visit. A race war didn't seem far-fetched. Now, that palpable sense of violence has been replaced by bungee-jumping tourists and a generation of opportunistic small business owners.
"Growing up in Soweto," says Maqubela, "I didn't think this would ever be possible." His restaurant is one of 25 catering to tourists in this enclave five miles west of downtown Johannesburg. About 30 bed-and-breakfasts have also sprung up in recent years, and an estimated 1 million visitors pour in annually to see, among other things, the family home where Nelson Mandela plotted his antiapartheid strategies.
The transformation of Soweto is part of the larger, mostly hopeful story of how South Africa's economic and political prospects are intertwined. This is—or should be—South Africa's year to shine. Starting on June 11, the FIFA World Cup of Soccer kicks off here, the first time the global sporting event, with a television audience estimated to be half the world, has been held on the African continent. Hundreds of thousands of tourists will fly in for the monthlong festivities, potentially providing a boost not just to South Africa's economy but to its reputation.
What visitors will find is a nation of First World amenities and infrastructure, and a place where optimism is perennially tested by unresolved Third World issues of poverty, crime, inflation, and racial tension. Already the undisputed economic engine of Africa—it accounts for 39 percent of sub-Saharan Africa's gross domestic product—South Africa still labors with plenty of fiscal shortcomings. One of them is that the recession did bite at least a little. Unemployment, which had been trending downward since 2006, rose in 2009 to 24 percent from 22 percent in 2008, throwing tens of thousands of mostly poor and middle-class black South Africans out of work.
On the positive side, South Africa (pop. 49 million) has proven resilient. While it saw a negative GDP of 1.8 percent last year, the economy began growing again at the end of 2009, aided by the vital, $27 billion-a-year tourism industry that saw a slight uptick in visitors in an otherwise down year. Moreover, South Africa has weathered a recent bout of tension sparked by incendiary remarks made by an upstart African National Congress (ANC) politician and the murder of a notorious white supremacist. Predictions by pundits here and abroad of race riots didn't pan out.
"All things considered, I think we've done well,"
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