‘We Still Dream Of African Unity’
By Hamid Golpira, Gul Jammas Hussain & M.A. Saki
01 July, 2009
Tehran Times
TEHRAN - South African Ambassador Ebrahim M. Saley says that Africans still believe in the dream of a united continent.
The South African ambassador to Tehran made the remarks in an interview with the Tehran Times earlier this month in which he also discussed the new South African government’s program, political developments in Africa, the war in the Congo, the Palestine issue, the prospects for Iran-South Africa trade, Iran’s nuclear program, and a number of other issues.
Following is the text of the interview:
Q: With Jacob Zuma’s victory in the recent presidential election, can we expect him to deliver on the promises of social justice and poverty alleviation?
A: It’s a question that implies a certain perception, and I can understand why people have these perceptions… In South Africa, the ANC is the ruling party, and the ANC also has been a liberation movement, and one of the oldest liberation movements on the continent. It started its activities in 1910, and in the years since then, it has matured.
The cause of the ANC has always been consistent in that it wanted social justice. The system of apartheid in South Africa, which was really a brutal system by all accounts, was essentially what people in the ANC were resisting against to bring about a system that would be democratic, that would be representative, that would be fair, and that would take into account the needs and the aspirations of the majority of the people of the country. In 1994, when finally there was the first democratic election in South Africa, and the ANC won… under the leadership of President Nelson Mandela, that was the defining moment for South Africa. But it also started a process…
Historically, apartheid was essentially about dividing people on the basis of race. So you had a minority of white people… that controlled all aspects of government, of the economy, and of social life. There were lots of restrictions. And if I give you an account, even for myself who lived through it, if I tell people, I find it difficult to imagine that is what the system was. Black people were essentially segregated. You couldn’t get education. A fraction of the amount that was spent on a white child’s education was spent on a Black child. At one stage… they spent 14 rands on a Black child’s education and 140 on the education of a white child.
So… these imbalances were effected in society. In 1994, after the election, you had a minority of South Africans, and for historical reasons the majority of them were white, who enjoyed a very high standard of living… And then together with that, the majority of Black South Africans had a standard of living that was on a par with people living in the Congo. So this was the disparity and the imbalance and the injustice that was prevalent… The ANC then had an obligation… to remedy these imbalances…
In South Africa, we didn’t have a revolution, we had a negotiated settlement. And in that negotiated settlement there was then an agreement that there would be a bill of rights, there would be a constitution, there would be rule of law, there would be a constitutional court. And through all that process, we had to find a way of uplifting the majority of the underdeveloped part of our society to match the levels that the privileged part of the society was enjoying. And that has been the challenge. Now that challenge translates into providing education, because that’s one of the keys to social mobility, providing health care, as… South Africa is probably one of the regions most affected by diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and that has put a serious burden on resources. Then the majority of the people did not have basic services like clean drinking water, electricity, or housing, or employment. So this is what… the ANC had to deliver. And that task has been carrying on. Up to this date, the ANC has managed to build three million houses.
For somebody like myself, especially when you travel at night, you come to realize that there are lights on top of a hill which you had never noticed before. It’s simply because there is a village that was not electrified… And now suddenly you realize that people have got electricity. And that makes a very big change in the quality of people’s lives. And then clean drinking water, which is a bit more complicated than providing electricity… there’s a huge program to provide that in a country… not blessed with huge quantities of water.
And… since in the apartheid system… there was a law that regulated the movement of people -- the pass laws -- it was called the Influx Control Act, if you were born on a farm and your father was working as a peasant on one of the farms, the children would not be allowed to move off the farm and work in the city. The system controlled the movement of people. So you had the system only allowing industry to draw its labor, but at the same time keeping the labor in. So there was a perpetual supply of cheap labor for what were essentially multinational and white-owned companies.
Now since that fell away, you have free movement of people. Because of unemployment, people were obliged to look for employment and began going to the cities. So you have a situation of rapid urbanization. But at the same time, you have informal human settlement, that is, people coming to the cities but because of housing shortages, they would then erect a makeshift shantytown. So you have this phenomenon of shantytowns, with all the social problems that go with that type of thing. And that then puts a lot of pressure on the government to build decent quality housing for this mass movement of people to urban areas. So there are many challenges, and the ANC has been dealing with these challenges…
We had the ANC conference in Polokwane in 2007. As a broad-based movement, the ANC is very responsive to the decisions of its wide membership. And it was the ANC membership that convened the conference in Polokwane, and through a process of grassroots consultation, they came up with, basically, decisions that would govern what should be happening. There was a review, and in that review there were very clear guidelines. And the guidelines are essentially about the upliftment of the majority of the people of South Africa. And that is the mandate of President Jacob Zuma’s government, and I think that’s a mandate that he’s taken very very seriously.
Q: Do you expect the COPE party, the Congress of the People, to work together with the ANC in these efforts to establish social justice?
A: I think it is important to understand the background to COPE. We had last year, when the ANC decided to recall President Thabo Mbeki, and that was last year if I remember around October, and President Mbeki stepped down, and at the same time the cabinet, his cabinet that he appointed, also was dissolved and reconstituted. Some of the ministers in President Mbeki’s cabinet were not reappointed to their posts. And some of them felt, rightly or wrongly, that they wanted to continue with their projects. It was then that the idea that a separate party that would address specific issues would be formed, and that party then adopted the name of Congress of the People and it was duly constituted as a political party.
Now, in our recent elections they contested as a party, and where the media had speculated about the extent of their support, we found that… the expected support didn’t really materialize.
COPE is a party, as any other party in South African politics. There is the Democratic Alliance, there is COPE, there is the International Independent Democrats. There’s a whole spectrum, the PAC, there’s the African Christian Party. So there’s a whole spectrum of parties.
Q: But only three parties got the majority of votes?
A: Maybe you need to put that into perspective. First of all, in the elections there was above 80% electoral turnout, which was quite high, it’s a very good turnout. Of that, the ANC then won 65.9% of the votes. So if we want to put it into a correct perspective, 65.9%, and then the rest was divided among the different parties. The Democratic Alliance is the official opposition… a very vocal opposition that has certain interests… And this is the vibrancy of the South African political situation. So the ANC is essentially the majority ruling party, but the ANC itself is constituted of a tripartite alliance, and that tripartite alliance is the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which is organized labor, then you have the South African Communist Party, and the ANC, with its different leagues, the Women’s League, the Youth League.
And within the African National Congress, you have a very dynamic democratic system within the ruling party itself. And that plays itself out in what you saw happening in our recent history since last year.
Q: Will the new South African government make a drastic change in the national AIDS policy?
A: I think that also needs to be put into perspective. AIDS or HIV as such… is a relatively new disease, and it manifested itself at first in different parts of the world among specific population groups attached to a certain lifestyle, and then it spread. And it became apparent that Africa is very heavily affected and our region in Southern Africa is one of the regions that is very heavily affected by this. The statistics on AIDS, or people infected with AIDS, ranged -- there were conservative statistics and overtly alarmist statistics… I think for a government that has to then allocate resources in order to deal with all the issues that it’s confronted with, and AIDS is one of those issues, it’s a big issue, there’s no doubt about it.
The fact of AIDS is that there is no cure up to now. So prevention is probably AIDS awareness. Then there are the aspects of a person’s socioeconomic situation, that is your intake of protein and of healthy food and clean drinking water, because it affects your immunity against every disease and with the result that you then succumb to secondary infections… and they have less resistance. And we have a situation in South Africa… we have a vast majority of people that are essentially living, if not below then near the poverty line. And in that situation, how do you then address the immediate problems? What do you do with state resources? Is it to uplift the standard of living by providing basic services like clean drinking water, electricity? The quality of life of a person is actually directly related to susceptibility and also the infection levels of HIV. That was a debate that was going on, and in that debate basically people were groping to come to terms and to understand what this issue was.
There was also, at that time, the development of anti-retroviral drugs, which were, as most drugs, licensed under certain drug companies. And you had to, as a state, determine first of all that this was of course a new disease that was being serviced by the drug companies with relatively newly developed drugs, expensive drugs, they had copyrights, they had side effects. And for the state to make a decision about this, you had to take… this basket of issues into consideration. And… there was some time spent obviously, and there’s a lot of criticism that that time was very critical. And I can understand that if you lost a loved one because of HIV infection and you had no recourse to anti-retrovirals when they were available, you do not understand the bigger picture.
But we are now commended in South Africa as having one of the most well-organized roll-out programs for anti-retrovirals. Anti-retrovirals are available.
It’s also not a simple medicine that you take, it’s a cocktail of medicines that you have to manage… it’s measured according to your blood count. So it’s a bit complicated. And in order to be effective, people have to be educated about its administration. And it has to be supervised, and it can only be effective if it is done in that way. So all of that translates into a program that is much more than simply buying drugs from a drug company and making them available to a population. And in all those things, in all those complications, I suppose that in the debate that raged, there were some misunderstandings, there were some wrong perceptions. But we have to deal with this reality. It is a reality that I don’t think is only localized to South Africa. The continent has a problem. I think it’s a global problem that manifests itself. And it’s a very cruel disease because it basically affects people at the most productive stage of their lives. It devastates families, it leaves orphans, it infects children. It’s a very sad situation. And hopefully, inshallah, we will deal with it. And ultimately, what we all hope and pray for is that we find a definitive medication that would then be able to vaccinate against the contraction of this disease.
Q: How will the new government deal with the country’s skyrocketing crime problem?
A: Crime has been a feature in South Africa for a very long time. In the past it was localized. Apartheid managed to localize Black communities. And by virtue of the fact that you had rampant poverty… I really believe that the level of poverty in a society is proportional to the level of crime in any given society. It’s a problem that we all confront. But at the same time, to simply talk of crime as a generalized phenomenon in South Africa -- and I’m not trying to downplay it -- but yes, the level of crime is unexpectedly high in the country.
But at the same time, the hysterical reactions you get from some people who don’t want to go to South Africa because they’re scared that on arrival they’re going to be mugged, they’re going to be hijacked -- that’s an exaggeration. Currently, we have more than five million visitors to South Africa. The incidence of tourists becoming victims of crime is very negligible. The majority of the people that have been there will tell you. You have to take the basic common-sense precautions, not walk around with a lot of money and flash it around. What you would do anywhere.
But people go there and come back. And, on the contrary, you find that people going there and coming back are actually commenting on how normal and how friendly people are. And they travel widely.
Now people like myself, we come out on postings and live abroad, and then, after a certain amount of years, we go back. And of course, we’ve also been reading the articles about the levels of hijacking and mugging and all this. And you find that naturally you are concerned. I was there now for nearly four years and in the beginning, we made sure that we took all the precautions. I even had a security guard in the house. Then I realized that this is overreacting. When it comes to issues of your own safety or the safety of your family or loved ones, you cannot take enough precautions. But at the same time, I think it has to be put into perspective.
And I believe that crime in South Africa, as we talk about it now, will diminish as the level of the standard of living of people starts rising up. It’s already happening. Some of the serious crimes like hijackings and cash-in-transit hijackings -- where banks moving money are targeted -- those types of crimes have come down. Unfortunately, it’s still the lower level crimes, the housebreaking, the crimes related to burglary.
What is much more unacceptable to us -- we should talk about it -- is that we find that the incidence of rape is unacceptable. And so the government will have very active campaigns… We feel that it is partly a function of poverty, but also you need to educate people, you need to create social awareness. We have a whole month dedicated to activism against violence against women and children, and that type of consciousness-raising, so that we can bring these levels of crime down. And I’m confident that, inshallah, we will succeed in that.
Q: How will the Zuma administration deal with the Zimbabwe crisis, given the fact that the ANC respects Robert Mugabe as an elder statesman of the Front Line States movement?
A: Well, I think there are two logics. There’s the one logic, which we don’t subscribe to, which became very fashionable in the recent past, where countries think if you don’t like somebody who is in power, then you have to do a regime change. And we South Africans do not subscribe to that logic at all.
We think that the problems of Zimbabwe should ideally be solved by Zimbabweans themselves. They are the ones who are more affected and they need to find certain solutions, so that those solutions are sustainable and work for them. We’ve been encouraging the Zimbabwean government to have elections, to follow the path of democracy. Since the last election, the situation has somewhat improved in that you have a national unity government -- Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai with Mr. Mugabe.
And I believe that Zimbabweans themselves, acting in their own interests, have realized that they cannot sustain the situation where you have a devastated economy -- going from being the breadbasket of Africa to then be looking for handouts. They will eventually move in a direction where they will stabilize the economy, normalize the situation. And that process is already underway. It is very very unfortunate that people have to endure the hardships that Zimbabweans have.
South Africa, being a neighboring country, (the situation) has a direct impact on it. At one stage, we were getting roughly about 3000 people coming across the border illegally per day.
I think, as the situation in Zimbabwe improves, the incentive, the push factor is less. I really believe people prefer to be in their own country if they can sustain themselves rather than being illegal migrants. I think Zimbabweans -- (and) I have spoken to many of them -- they are very well-educated, they are very creative people, very genius people, very resourceful people, and I really think that they have a future. It’s unfortunate that their politics have failed. But now it’s evolving towards normality. I believe that Zimbabwe has a great future.
Q: Will South Africa act as a major player in the African Union to help resolve conflicts across the continent? Is South Africa going to become more involved in efforts to resolve the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo?
A: South Africa has put a lot of resources into Congo… First of all, the conflict around the DRC was an ongoing conflict that sucked in many countries… epic proportions. People compare it to a world war… the casualties… I don’t think anybody will ever have an accurate account of how many people lost their lives in that war or lost their livelihoods or were displaced. The irony is that it’s one of the richest countries on the continent.
It’s a legacy of colonialism -- the worst kind of colonialism. I don’t think there is a good colonialism and bad colonialism, they are all bad. But Congo was seen to be the personal property of the Belgian king. And under that type of colonial system, at that time they used to tap rubber, and each Congolese was given a quota. If they didn’t produce that quota in the given time, they would have their hands cut off. It’s a horrible history.
Coming out of that, in the sixties, the one leader that the Congolese had all put their hopes in, Patrice Lumumba, was then killed -- assassinated because of Cold War rivalries or whatever reasons. And since then Congo has never stabilized. You had somebody like Mobuto, who sat at the helm, and was courted by countries because he represented a certain faction in the Cold War against communism. And the Congolese have paid the price and go on paying the price for that.
Then in South Africa we invited all these parties to Sun City, and we kept them there for weeks on end because they had to work out a solution amongst themselves. And eventually what emerged was a very tentative type of arrangement between… a consensus arrangement between these parties, so many different parties. Some of the parties were represented by only one or two people; everyone wants to be president. It was really difficult. But out of that evolved some kind of a consensus around President (Laurent Désiré) Kabila, and then he was assassinated and his son has taken over.
But unfortunately… as much as Congo’s resources and wealth are a blessing, they’re also a curse. Because it’s one of those things that everybody covets. And there are many interests that are locked into different (areas)… diamonds, cobalt, timber, coltan, uranium. It’s just everything there.
With the result that there are so many vested interests, and these interests are not allowing the situation to stabilize. So, in South Africa we have been assisting them. And we believed that the first step was to get the different militias to disarm, to try to get a cohesive national army, and then to organize elections. I still remember that the ballot paper was huge… And then you had to organize polling stations in remote areas that are inaccessible.
But despite all those difficulties, you have a semblance of progress. They had an election. I can tell you that the South African taxpayers bore the brunt of the cost of organizing all that. We also have a peacekeeping force very actively engaged in the Congo. And we believe that the stability of Congo is critical for our continued prosperity. And we have to allow the Congolese to stabilize themselves.
It’s incredible, the waterway, the Congo River… (For) our energy needs, hydroelectricity, there are projects, very very huge projects, like the Inga 1, 2, 3, and Grand Inga (dams), which… when completed will really electrify the continent. It’s on the Congo River.
Q: Does the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have any plan to deepen economic integration or to adopt a single currency in the near future?
A: The grand vision on the continent, which everybody agrees on -- all Africans -- and this is a vision that Africans have cherished since the creation of the OAU, is to have a united, integrated Africa. And while that vision was very much alive… for various reasons, and also because of the Cold War and the divisions that resulted from that… this ambition of the Africans was put aside. And you had rivalries. I always tell people that the Cold War was not really cold for Africans. In Africa, the Cold War was very hot. You can talk about Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, the Namibian situation. But just about everywhere on the continent, it manifested itself in one form or another, in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. All of the continent was affected.
And it’s only again now, with the dedication of a new crop of leadership, that once again you find that this ideal of having a united Africa is taking some shape. There are differences of opinion, not about having the African Union but about how you are going to implement it. Whether a collective of heads of state can come together and say that from tomorrow we have a single currency, a single army, a common foreign policy, that’s being proposed.
But I think there is also another viewpoint in the continent, which I subscribe to, which is that African integration, in order for it to be sustainable, has to go through a process and that process should be driven by timelines, but at the same time, it needs to have certain milestones in place. Because if you consider the difference in the GDP of South Africa with the GDP of any country north of our borders, there’s such a big disparity. How do you harmonize those situations in order to get an effective system where you can say that you are unified?
There is a lot of cooperation among Africans at the level of the African Union. They made big achievements. African countries have a legal document, the Constituent Act of the African Union, that governs them. It’s a constitution for the continent and it’s also a way for integration.
Then the ongoing problems of coup d’états and parties coming to power through non-constitutional means -- that has also been red-carded, it’s not acceptable anymore. The issue of non-interference in internal affairs has now been changed to not non-interference that you can do what you want, but it’s non-indifference. These are the differences with the OAU.
Then there’s also the decision that you would then move gradually by first integrating regions and then ultimately getting the regions to integrate into a united Africa. So you have the East Africa region, you have the (Arab) Maghreb (Union) region, you have ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States), and you have SADC. And these are the major blocs. And now some of these blocs make more progress than others on certain fronts and others are more successful on other fronts. But the basis is that they would then integrate within the region with a view to ultimately realizing African union, which I think, I hope, that in my lifetime will happen, inshallah.
Q: Can South Africa act as a gateway for Iran to trade with other SADC members?
A: I have a problem with portraying any country as a gateway. I think that implies there’s no other way of dealing with African countries except through a mediator and a middle country. I don’t think there’s anything that restricts Iran from engaging any of the African countries in their own right. What is usually the case is that, yes, there are ample opportunities for, and we look at the possibility of having joint ventures in order to work in third countries, especially in telecommunications and infrastructure projects. So Africa has got lots of opportunities. And I really think that, as an emerging continent, it offers opportunities that are probably saturated everywhere else in the world. So Africa is the last frontier.
Q: What are the prospects for Iran-South Africa cooperation in the field of energy, especially in the oil and gas sectors?
A: The fact of the matter is that Iran supplies nearly a quarter of South Africa’s crude oil, which is huge. We have a joint venture in a cracking unit… with Petropars where they make polypropylene… So it’s a huge cooperation. We hope to be able to expand on that cooperation. And I believe that we will expand on it. So the relationship between South Africa and Iran is quite vibrant, and it can only grow further, and hopefully that is what will be the focus of my activities.
Q: What is the new South African government’s stance toward the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program?
A: I’m very glad that you’re asking this question because then I can clarify what South Africa stands for. South Africa is a member of the IAEA and the NPT. South Africa also has, historically, developed nuclear weapons, and we unilaterally decided to get rid of them. We also then got rid of the delivery system that goes with such a weapons system because South Africa believes that possession of nuclear weapons is immoral and it should not have been allowed. We believe that nobody should have nuclear weapons. There’s no justification for any power to possess a nuclear arsenal because they should ask themselves ‘what for?’
So we believe there should be no nuclear weapons and that the world should move towards disarmament. And we support the move towards disarmament. And no exceptions.
So that’s where we’ve come from. We believe that nuclear energy is very important for its civilian application. We rely on nuclear energy from one of our power stations, Koeberg in Cape Town. That’s the only one we have. But there’s also a debate in South Africa among the civil society with regard to the whole issue of nuclear energy and whether there are no other alternatives to nuclear energy. So far that debate has not really concluded -- whether we want to opt for solar or wind. You know, we also sit on one of the biggest reserves of coal, and the majority of our power stations are fired by coal. Of course, there’s the debate about coal not being clean, but we believe that you can develop technology to clean up coal-fired power stations.
The issue of nuclear energy is there, it’s on the board, but within civil society there’s some resistance because of the danger, the inherent danger of contamination as we saw in Chernobyl, and people remember that, and then also the environment and… that is internally in South Africa.
But we subscribe to the principle that nuclear energy should be allowed to anybody that wants to use it for civilian nuclear purposes. At the same time, we condemn any country, all countries, that possess a nuclear arsenal, and we think it is immoral for them, and everybody should disarm.
Q: So, South Africa believes Iran has the right to access civilian nuclear technology?
A: Iran has a right (since) it’s a signatory member to the NPT, and it has the right to nuclear power like any other country or signatory country has the right to civilian nuclear technology.
Q: Under the apartheid regime, South Africa was a great friend of Israel, regularly supplied uranium to Israel for its covert nuclear program, and there were even reports that South Africa and Israel conducted a joint nuclear weapon test. Many people believe that Israel has instituted an apartheid system in Gaza and the West Bank. So what is South Africa’s position now?
A: Yes, I mean there is a lot of association with what the Israelis are doing vis-à-vis Palestinians to what the South African apartheid regime was doing against its own people. And I don’t think that those comparisons are misplaced. I even come across people who say that in some aspects, what the Israelis are doing in the occupied territories is far worse than what was happening in South Africa. I cannot imagine how it can be worse. But I think we all have been subjected to the images of Gaza. It should not have happened. How can anyone justify the killing and maiming of young people and women? It’s very sad. It’s a shame. It cannot be condoned. It cannot be tolerated.
The other question was also very interesting that South Africa has relations with Israel. Yes, that’s the relation we inherited. You quite rightfully said there were very strong relations with the former apartheid government in South Africa. Once we inherited this relation, there were a lot of things that tied in. And many things were done under the joint licenses. And a significant part of our population currently has very strong relations with Israel. But increasingly, because of Israeli actions, that relation is being questioned because of pressure groups and civil society. There’s a lot of pro-Palestinian activism on the ground. And that pro-Palestinian activism then translates into actual questioning of government policies vis-à-vis Israel.
So far, we still have relations, but I wouldn’t characterize our relation with Israel as being strong anymore, like it was in the past. And I believe that relationship will come under further strain if the Israelis continue to behave in a manner that will inflame civil society in South Africa. Also, just for your information… our trade unions, which were very active during the anti-apartheid struggle, came to a decision that they will not handle any cargo from South Africa going to Israel or any cargo coming from Israel to South Africa. Now that would indicate the amount of pressure there is on the government to reconsider this relationship with Israel.
I think we all equally, South Africans as well as anybody else in the world with a conscience, should be outraged when we see images of little children and women being killed in the name of… we’re not really sure what. And that is not tolerated. And I’m very vocal about it.
Q: The Congress of South African Trade Unions made the decision to not handle any cargo coming from or going to Israel?
A: This is the decision of the Congress of South African Trade Unions not to handle Israeli-related cargo. This is the decision that has been taken. Whether they can sustain it or not, we have to see.
Q: Since South Africa is the only African country and one of the only Southern countries in the G20, will it act as a representative of the Global South at G20 meetings?
A: You know, the G20, this is a new formation. And South Africa, by virtue of being a certain size, industrialized, we were then asked to join the G20. The G20 is very specific. The last meetings were very specific about the current global economic crisis, how to deal with it.
I don’t really think we are the leaders of the region or bloc. We’re there by virtue of the fact that we are one of the major economies that will also have to grapple with this problem. And how we grapple with the problem will be determined by our own particular circumstances and our own needs.
Q: After all these heavy questions, maybe we should turn to a mellower question. So how is the World Cup going to turn out? And please accept our congratulations on being named the host of the 2010 World Cup.
A: Thank you very much. The World Cup, as you can imagine, as it draws closer, has started generating a lot of energy and excitement in the country. We always maintained and said we would be ready. And of course there was skepticism because it will be the first time that an African country is hosting the World Cup. We had no doubts that we could do it and do it in such a way that would set new standards for the World Cup as an event.
So the stadia are all in the final stage of completion… And we believe that we will be more than ready.
Just to give you an aside. Just to show you that there is a certain level of confidence. The Indian Cricket League moved to South Africa for various reasons. And according to all of them, it was very very successful. And people were phoning me and saying, “We really feel proud to be South African” because of the way we managed and hosted this. And it’s a quite huge thing.
So, I don’t have any doubts that we are capable of hosting the World Cup with all the trimmings. It’s also a big opportunity for us because it has focused us and all our resources so that we could then do all the infrastructure upgrading that is not only going to serve us for the World Cup… but we’ll also get spin-offs.
