Introduction
As suggested in the previous chapter, the construction of security at mega-events is indicative of wider debates about the relationship between government power and commercialism and the ways in which this is reflected through urban space. Recent decades have seen various academic models which argue that the ‘neoliberalisation’ of security has seen the creation of more ‘fragmented’
(Welch, 2008) forms of governance in which the state is only one of the forces in society which
‘steers’ security. Eick (2010) identifies this as a key factor in the relationship between host states and FIFA. While governments administer and subsidise World Cups, the real power – albeit for the period of hosting – lies elsewhere, as it is FIFA who exerts the final authority over security measures. In contrast, Klauser (2011) argues that there may be a temptation to place too much focus upon the idea of powerful, shadowy, transnational sporting bodies imposing their will on nation states. As a result, he proposes that event models are translated into different contexts because of their adaptability to on- going institutional concerns.
However, both of these accounts downplay the political aspects of security. Although Eick positions FIFA’s increased power as a product of the neoliberal turn in global political economy, it is unclear how the idea of ‘steering security’ for corporate interests squares with the ‘hyper-productivist’
(Brenner, 2001) role played by the state in organising World Cups. This is doubly surprising, because Eick’s article (279-280) starts with a discussion of how FIFA’s current rise to political and financial influence began at the same time as the neoliberal experiments of the Pinochet military dictatorship in Chile. While this is not to suggest that FIFA requires the assistance of authoritarian states to ensure its revenue stream, Eick does not convince that neoliberalism entails the subjugation of state power to external forces.
At the same time, Klauser (2011:8) appears to narrow the ‘meaning’ of security for participating police forces to the question of concentrating and regulating fans within defined security zones. While he does not claim to offer a comprehensive model of security meanings (9), this gap begs the question of how security may also entail additional aspects of social regulation, control and repression. These omissions may also reflect something about the nature of mega-events: how do we square the
apparent dominance of private institutions over national governments with the accompanying displays of the power of the security state in full mobilisation? Or to generalise the question, how do we reconcile the perception that commercial interests control urban space with increasingly extensive, even militarised, state policing apparatuses? (Graham, 2010:89)
148 From within radical criminology, some scholars have argued that framing these relationships in terms of imposition and hierarchy underestimates the collaborative nature of security governance. O’Reilly (2011:29) suggests that contemporary security governance can be positioned within the nexus between ‘high politics’ and ‘high finance’. This ‘state–corporate symbiosis’ entails a shared outlook towards a global discourse of insecurity, which pivots around the conception of an increasingly risky future, which in turn is used to increase the power of both the state and private security in the present.
However, this relationship is often characterised by dysfunction and parasitism (191) as egregious behaviour on the part of the private sector is hidden behind the institutional ‘shield’ of the state (Bassey, 2008). Snider (2000) argues that the knowledge claims of neoliberalism have created a built- in set of legitimations for such security relationships through the deployment of a developmental rhetoric which argues that governments can only create economic growth through sustained
concessions to big business. Under this dominant ‘reality system’ (Fisher, 2009), states may pursue elite projects which are presented to the public as being forced by the ‘supposed external constraints’
(Brenner, 2001: 802) of the market. Indeed, the idea of corporate actors as ‘partners’ or ‘stakeholders’
in security (Zedner, 2006:83) is indicative of how the state is no longer in the business of ‘the hierarchical imposition’ of regulation on private actors.
In practice, the alliances between governments and sporting associations may thus use state power to leverage ‘liminal and relatively hidden spaces’ (Whyte, 2007:180) which provide locations for both private enrichment and extensions in government power. While this model of state–corporate alliance draws upon the theoretical taxonomy of criminology, as Gaffney argues (2010:27), such forms of temporary governance also bear a striking resemblance to the structures of mega-event governance. In particular, the US led invasion of Iraq and the post-war rule by the CPA, have been cited as an
exemplar of ‘shock’ governance (Klein, 2007) as a result of a ‘reconstruction’ process that was characterised by extra-legal forms of governance which portioned off substantial parts of the Iraqi economy to corporate actors.
While more historically specific and more focused on economic restructuring, Klein’s concept of the
‘shock doctrine’ echoes the ‘state of exception’ (Agamben, 2005) in that it proposes that times of perceived crisis are used to radically alter societies. Moreover, what is notable is that most of the historical examples she cites – from the Thatcher government’s conflict with the miners in the United Kingdom to the rise of the homeland security industry in the United States – have paired deregulation and privatisation with dramatic augmentations in the power and reach of state security and
surveillance.
As a result, we do not necessarily have to turn to the extreme end of inter-state conflicts to find comparisons between mega-events and the logic of warfare. In particular, mega-event governance has
149 parallels with the more quotidian ‘public safety wars’ (Feldman, 2004), or ‘pacification security jobs’
(Neocleous, 2011) which increasingly characterise domestic policing throughout the world. These are also reflective of an ‘insecurity discourse’ which is shared and translated between political and economic centres of power (O’Reilly, 2011) and finds its expression in open-ended ‘wars’ on drugs, crime and terror. And unlike the exceptional circumstances of mega-events, these are permanent, on- going conflicts. For Hallsworth and Lea (2011), this tendency to securitise social policy combines to produce an increasingly powerful state ‘Leviathan’, which enforces both political and economic order.
This is accompanied by developments in the global economy, such as the growth in the security industry and the increased computational power of digital surveillance, which augment the arsenals of governments.
The adaptability of security models, in which sporting associations push for the creation of ‘clean sites’ (Klauser, 2011:12) throughout host cities is increased by its resonance with an on-going set of security preoccupations which involves the creation of differentiated and highly securitised urban spaces that are used for both branding and security. The state security apparatus serves to enforce the walls, barricades and security zones used to make urban space safe for capital. From the perspective of a sporting authority, access-controlled security sites ‘temporarily re-territorialise particularly attractive parts of ... host cities in the interest of visibility and branding for its commercial partners’
(Klauser, 2011: 6). Weizman (2007:9) suggests that the ubiquity of walls and fortified enclaves can be understood as part of a continuum of global developments, from gated communities in the USA to illegal settlements on the West Bank, which extend physical and virtual borders set against ‘poverty and violence’. From this, it is possible to trace techniques, technologies and geographies of
‘occupation’ (ibid) throughout the world. This may be especially pertinent in the case of mega-events, as domestic policing and security is aligned with international processes. In particular, the planning for mega-events may pivot around a rendering of host environments as ‘security-scapes’ (Wall and Monahan, 2011) which entail an official perception of broadly homogenous threats and which demand comparably similar counter-measures.
For Graham (2010:xxiii), this is characteristic of the attempts to manage flows of people and capital through enclosures and exclusion zones as part of a broader accumulative geography in which the exploitation of resources in the global South sustains wealth in the North. The deployment of security measures in aid of a process of neocolonial extraction echoes many of the criticisms levelled against FIFA’s relationship with the South African state, which depicted the organisation as a latter-day colonial power engaged in the 21st century plunder of an African country. However, in the case of South Africa, this is complicated by FIFA’s reliance on the power of the South African state.
Furthermore, it can be argued that World Cup security measures were aligned with a project of state marketing which actively tried to recalibrate South Africa’s international status as an emergent power.
150 Indeed, as Abourahme (2009) implies, post-colonial and third world elites may be pioneers in
managing forms of exclusion and ‘occupation’ which are later translated and replicated in Northern countries.
This raises a wider question about the philosophical nature of security. Eick (2010) argues that mega- events represent the outer point of the neoliberalisation of state security in which policing measures are wedded to commercialism. This implies that security and commercialism can be separated and distinguished from each other. However, another approach may hold that at a fundamental level, the politics of security is itself a product of capitalist order. For Neocleous (2011:192), this need to
‘secure insecurity’ is the mechanism for structuring, administrating and controlling disruptions, disturbances and the ‘constant revolutionising of production’ inherent within capitalism. In this sense, rather than distinct areas of mega-event security being captured or instrumentalised for commercial purposes, they are intrinsically constitutive in the fabrication of capitalist order: the war machine and consumerism in tandem.
Finally, the interzone between national security and spectacle may also entail another series of exchanges between policing and commerce. While security measures work to preserve the symbolic image of a mega-event, security services deploy policing tactics which seek to project a desired image of competency and strength (Debord, 1988, Martin, 2011) and embrace a ‘self-conscious semiotics of policing’ (Boyle and Haggerty: 2009:259). As commercial bodies exert a greater influence upon state security, this suggests another exchange, as policing and military institutions incorporate techniques associated with commercial advertising within their governance repertoires. However, as Hagemann (2010) has argued, the alignment of security and spectacle can also serve to produce a concentrated version of security preoccupations which exposes processes and tactics which are less overt than in
‘normal’ conditions.
As this chapter argues, the relationship between FIFA and the South African state has often been understood in terms of invasion, occupation and colonisation. However, in contrast, this chapter will argue that this perception was in fact enabled and leveraged by state power. Rather than serving as an operational platform for an assault on South African sovereignty, FIFA’s institutional objectives complemented the security preoccupations of the South African government. This was in turn reflected in the spatial governance of the tournament, which revolved around creating a mobile security apparatus (Rodgers, 2007) across host cities. Rather than being a novel imposition, it will be argued that this represented an intensification of a well-established security trajectory within South African cities. While the concept of ‘occupation’ provides a useful axiom (Weizman, 2007) through which to frame security governance, it will be maintained that not only was this internally managed but that it has its origins in ‘everyday’ security practices. Finally, developing the concept of spectacle
151 as articulated by Hagemann (2010) and Martin (2011), it will be suggested that the display of dual state/corporate power also exposes facets of security which are less than complementary to the branding initiatives of its organisers. In particular, it will be argued that the World Cup revealed how, under the conditions of exception, the state security apparatus becomes a force for the entrenchment and fortification of power and privilege. The implication for South African society may be that this convergence goes beyond ‘interpretive flexibility’ (Klauser, 2011) and presents an image of national security in extremis, in which corporate interest and state policy are increasingly indistinguishable.
While the knowledge claims of neoliberalism present this arrangement as harmonious and beneficial to the public, in practice this symbiosis has become parasitical and dysfunctional (O’Reilly, 2010).
Chapter Structure
The chapter will begin by discussing how FIFA’s role in the governance of the World Cup was perceived by the media and civil society as a kind of imposed regime. This was given further credence by the statements of political officials which presented FIFA as a colonial power. In reaction, the state was quick to present itself as an equal stakeholder with FIFA and depicted the enforcement of its obligations to the association as an assertion, rather than subversion, of national sovereignty.
It will than turn to a discussion of the political nature of FIFA and suggest that the framing of the association as a ‘shadow government’ is misleading. While the organisation reserved the right to approve security measures, it will be suggested that much of its popular status as a globally dominant football ‘mafia’ is leveraged through the concessions provided to it by host states.
In turn, the involvement of foreign policing establishments and private security companies will be discussed as adding an additional layer of security to the state’s plans. This was linked into the broader spatial strategy of the South African state, which worked through the creation of a series of linked, temporary ‘green zones’. While this was aligned with FIFA’s financial strategy, it was also used to pursue a series of additional measures, not specifically mandated by FIFA. However, it will be argued that the functionally open definition of World Cup ‘security’ was used to intensify continued efforts to sanitise urban space.
Finally, it will be argued that, in practice, host cities were for a brief period the ultimate expression of the convergence of commercialism and security, in which saturation advertising blurred into
saturation policing.
152 State Branding
The occupation of South Africa
In May 2010, the parody news site Haiybo (2010) ran an ‘article’ with the headline ‘FIFA buys South Africa for R750 million’. According to the satire:
Danny Jordaan announced that Sepp Blatter will be inaugurated as President during the closing ceremony on July 12th, with the country’s name to be changed to The Bureaucrats’
Republic of Fifania®… The governmental seat of power in Fifania® will be transferred from Pretoria to Camps Bay, where Blatter is building a “cosy little lock-up-and-go president’s crib” spanning 17 blocks. All current governmental departments will be disbanded except for the Ministry of Defence. The armed forces are to be expanded to accommodate the 44 million men, women and children over the age of seven who will be conscripted to serve in Blatter’s elite defence corps, the Soccer Soldiers (SS). The SS’s primary function will be to “seek out and destroy” people infringing FIFA copyright the world over. Children under the age of seven are expected to be put to work in state-of-the-art production facilities manufacturing FIFA-branded clothing, pens and cups.
While humorous, this absurdist piece is also indicative of some of the negative sentiments expressed throughout the media and civil society towards FIFA’s relationship with the South African
government. These criticisms became particularly noticeable as the police and judicial system began to implement FIFA’s commercial restrictions in the lead-up to the tournament. By April 2010, FIFA was investigating over 50,000 cases of alleged ambush marketing in South Africa, and filing interdicts for a range of cases, from the advertising campaign of the budget airliner Kulula to keyring holders which allegedly breached marketing rights (Seale, 2010).
The enforcement of the commercial measures was often framed as draconian and suggestive of how FIFA was using the state machinery to advance its own internal agendas. The enactments of host city by-laws also became controversial and led some commentators to suggest that spatial restrictions only served to benefit FIFA and its corporate sponsors through creating citadels of profit extraction
(Rangongo, 2010). Sophie Nakueira (cited in Tolsi, 2010a) argued that the creation of commercial zones and restrictions on public space inhibited people’s constitutional right to freedom of movement.
FIFA’s apparent influence over the lives of citizens was even seen to extend to issues of health, with the emergence of allegations that the emergency preparations of the KZN Health Department involved keeping designated public hospitals half full for the duration of the tournament (Ndaliso, 2010). The extent of security measures was thus often perceived as evidence of a private institution imposing its imprint over host cities and asserting its capacity to shape and micromanage urban form according to its interests (Klauser, 2007:7).
FIFA was thus presented as an invasive force which had captured the state and turned the country into a temporary colony or fiefdom, with one editorial column concluding that ‘we have surrendered
153 national sovereignty to a gang of old, white men in Geneva who conceive of South Africa principally as a sound stage on which a month-long commercial for their sponsors is to be filmed’ (Dawes, 2010).
Popular depictions of FIFA described the association as capable of overriding the autonomy of the state, which included representations of the body as the ‘masters of the universe’ (Eliseev, 2010) and claims that ‘for most football fans the World Cup will take place in FIFA-land and not South Africa’
(Curnow, 2010).
Even politicians who were involved in the implementation of restrictions appeared to be critical of the organisation, with the Premier of the Western Cape Helen Zille claiming, ‘I should have flexed my muscles in response to FIFA’s demands a long time ago. They are not a colonial power’ (Tolsi, 2010b). Along with the imperialist connotations, FIFA was also depicted as a quasi-criminal organisation, with one widely disseminated article in the City Press newspaper quoting an unnamed
‘senior government official’ as saying ‘FIFA are a bunch of thugs. Not even the UN expects you to sign away your tax base. These mafiosos do’ (Rademeyer, Prince and Lombard, 2010). This metaphor appeared to resonate with the public. For example, during a march in Durban on June 16 2010, which included former stadium stewards, protesters’ chanted ‘Get out FIFA mafia’ (Veith, 2010). After the World Cup itself, other officials claimed that security planning had been constrained by the conditions demanded by FIFA. The head of 2010 strategic planning for Durban, Julie-May Ellingson, said that the greatest challenge of hosting the tournament was
accepting that while we would be held accountable for the hosting, we in fact had no control or say over what FIFA did. In the build-up, there were too many role-players with conflicting agendas, lack of clarity as to who was responsible for what and who would have to pay for what (Dardagan, 2011:10).
At the same time, the government and the LOC were presented as betraying the developmental aspirations of ordinary South Africans through pandering to FIFA’s demands. An exposé on the hosting arrangements in one national newspaper was titled ‘FIFA called the shots and we said yes’
(Tolsi, 2010a), suggesting that the state had failed to limit the organisation’s demands and had committed public funds to a wasteful private project. Indeed, such criticisms became so pervasive in the build-up to the World Cup that Danny Jordaan publically denied that South Africa had been ‘sold out’ and stated: ‘The fact of the matter is that more countries are making bids ... If you make a bid then you accept the terms and conditions of the event’ (Sapa, 2010b). Indeed, not all commentary saw FIFA’s ‘colonial’ rule as negative, with Kane-Berman (2010) arguing that the government would have been unable to create the conditions for a successful World Cup without external control.
The criticisms of FIFA’s role in South Africa particularly focused on the contrast between the developmental rhetoric used by the government and the practical implementation of governance