See  http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/blog/my_south_africa_by_jonathan_jansen.html#

Mark Gevisser wrote about South African identity in both the build up to the World Cup  Cup http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article439527.ece/I-want-to-imagine-the-SA-of-my-dreams  as well as after the final whistle had been blown:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jul/10/south-africa-unites-over-football . See his latest take  on what it means to be a South African in late 2010:  http://www.arttimes.co.za/news_read.php?news_id=2683 

WHAT? SATURDAY VOICES AT BOEKEHUIS WHEN? SATURDAY 21 August 2010, 12:00 for 12:30 TOPIC: William Gumede, author of the book, Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC in conversation with Sakhela Buhlungu, sociologist and expert in the field of labour studies, about his new book, A Paradox of Victory COSATU and [...]

It will take three to five years to see the economic benefits of the World Cup, a Human Sciences Research Council academic says. However, it was too early to tell how great these benefits would be, said Dr Udesh Pillay, head of research on service delivery at the HSRC. He added that the economic benefits [...]

The World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands was the most-watched football game in US television history, drawing 24.3 million viewers, said Nielsen. According to a report on the IoL site, the final on the ABC network and Spanish-language Univision outdrew the June 26 US-Ghana match, which attracted 19.4 million viewers, and the 18.1 [...]

John Carlin, the author of ’Playing the Enemy’, says all those stories, promoted by FIFA, among others, about the World Cup being the 1995 rugby World Cup all over again, about healing racial wounds, uniting the fractured nation and so forth, were off the mark. ’It was much, much better than that. What we saw [...]

SA’s SWC stadia stun the world   From Sport24  12th July 2010
South Africa’s Soccer World Cup stadiums have stunned the globe’s largest sporting audience with audacious style although critics say a developing country can ill afford such extravagance and some will be white elephants.  When South Africa won the right to stage the tournament six years [...]

The reports on South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup coming in from all over the world are overwhelmingly positive  with certain common threads weaving through most of the responses. The substance of most articles is celebratory – describing the connections made across race and class; the nation-building role of the event and the patriotism [...]

The Fifa World Cup: Three things happening simultaneously  By Steuart Pennington of  SA Good NewsI was gutted by Ghana’s loss on Friday night. Last time I felt like that was when SA lost the Cricket World Cup to Australia in the last over in 1994. Everyone in my chosen venue seemed to freeze as the [...]

This is a speech delivered in May 2010 by Dr Christo Wiese, Director of Primedia and Chairman of Shoprite HoldingsA few years ago I read a very interesting book, by a Lebanese writer, one Taleb, titled the Black Swan. By now, I am sure, we’ve all heard the story of the “once enigmatic” Black Swan [...]