/ 1 February 2010

With world domination, no one does it like Fifa

If I was a mascot I know who I’d want to be: Zakumi, the green-haired leopard for the Soccer World Cup in South Africa.

I’d get to proclaim being “proudly South African” from the rooftops while coining it in China.

Of course, Zakumi has learned from the best.

When he first burst into painfully multicoloured existence in September 2008, we knew Zaks was special because Danny Jordaan told us he was born in the magical time of 1994. You know, the year of the Iraq disarmament crisis, the Rwandan genocide and SA’s first democratic elections. But mostly because of the democracy thing. This naturally made him, a “proud South African”, with no other qualifications necessary, thank you very much. Sure, you have hundreds of Chinese teenagers toiling in a factory in Shanghai to produce your motley persona, but you still get to claim you were “designed and produced exclusively in the host country”.

Of course. Being in the right place at the right time gives you access to all sorts of privileges later in life. Just ask our politicians. They didn’t struggle to be poor.

See, Zakumi has also struggled. He has had to endure endless cruel taunts and speculation that he was really a “moth-eaten and gangrenous lion covered in lesions caused by a sexually transmitted disease”. There was the counter-revolutionary hate-speech about his name, green hair and out-sized bobble head. And even a Facebook group. Poor Zaks thought that this was it — you know you’ve arrived when you get one of those. Then he saw the title: “Whoever designed the Zakumi should be placed inside it. And set on fire.”

“Like, metaphorically speaking — to light up the night sky with the glorious fire of my genius, fire?” asked Zaks hopefully. “Um, no,” said his people, shuffling their feet and looking awkwardly at the ground. “Just, you know, the normal incineration and destroying kind of fire.”

Of course Fifa immediately denied that any of its representatives visited the Zakumi production factory in China’s largest city, which workers described as “one of the worst factories around here”. That’s a bit like finding the worst Siberian prison camp. You know it’s going to be bad.

ANC MP Shiaan-Bin Huang, who is responsible for the whole Chinese fiasco (go figure — now there’s a gigantic step backwards for the hard-fought South Africa-Chinese relations in this country), was really very sorry about the whole labour thing. I mean OF COURSE it’s awful that young Chinese workers have to work 13-hour days for about R1 080 a month, in freezing winter temperatures and swelteringly hot summers. But they’re used to it, right?

It reminds me of the time I was trying out a new bookclub and one of the girls started telling us about the wedding dress she had just ordered. From China. “It came in just 10 days — at a fraction of the cost!” she enthused, as we all fake-smiled and toyed with our lemon meringues, trying not to imagine bruised Chinese hands sewing until the wee hours of the morning.

But really, I do feel sorry for Zakumi. He was set-up for failure from the very start. And now he serves as more ammunition against the Fifa-backlash that is gradually gathering pace in our country. and follow here on twitter here.