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Press TV has conducted an interview with Dale T McKinley, an independent writer and researcher from Johannesburg, about how people are frustrated in Brazil for hosting the World Cup.

Press TV: Too premature and one-sided to think how this World Cup is not going to benefit Brazilians, but obviously Brazilians are not happy based on the poll that has come out that saying that 61% don’t believe that Brazil should have hosted the World Cup. So what is the gripe that Brazilians have?

McKinley: First of all, I don’t think it’s premature at all. I live here in South Africa and we hosted the last World Cup, the exactly the same kind of sentiments were expressed that the stadiums and road infrastructure were going to benefit the population and there were going to be huge legacies and the job creation and everything else.

But the reality is that we are left in the mass of debts. Cities that were built the World Cup, the six cities are drowning in debts. They are considering actually destroying the stadiums four years after because it’s too much public money that are going into the stadiums.

The amount of employment that was generated was temporary employment. All of those construction workers are now out of work. So it was a very temporary situation. The roads that were built, we are now being charged and they are being tolled, and so the working class and poor people can’t afford to use those roads.

The fact of the matter is that FIFA World Cup has been captured by an elite. It’s been captured by corporate interests who are interested in making money. That doesn’t mean the people don’t enjoy the spectacle, that they enjoy the soccer.In South Africa we enjoyed that, but it was like a drug. We took up the drugs and everybody felt good for a while and then the hangover and letdown was very bad afterwards. And that’s exactly what’s happened.

The Brazilians have woken up to that earlier than we did in South Africa. They have understood that as the most unequal country in the world, South Africa and Brazil trade number one and two in terms of the inequality index, is that the question for countries like Brazil and South Africa is whether or not they should be spending billions and billions of dollars on something such as the World Cup.

When you don’t have proper education, health facilities, all sorts of other things, when those people who live – as you show – just around the stadiums can’t even afford to go there.

So, the question is not simply one of debating whether or not this is premature, we already have the facts in hand. I live in a country where we are experiencing these facts after that and it’s not a very pretty picture.

Press TV: Let’s see here. This came as a record number in terms of spending. I believe it raked in 11 billion dollars if I am not mistaken and of course you have different cities that are hosting it. Let’s use Sao Paulo as an example. How can it be that out guest there, Francisco Domingues[ the other guest of the program], says that it’s OK to spend billions where you have favelas or you have these poor neighborhoods that lack some basics for living. Why has that not been tackled, yet spending on the stadium has been flourishing in terms of the infrastructures etc.?

McKinley: Well precisely, first of all let me say that I followed Brazilian politics and the Worker's party for the last fifteen years and it’s a red hearing argument to argue that because this Worker’s party and Dilma Rousseff and Lula before her, of course they have done some socially progressive things, of course they have tried to address inequality, but that’s not the point we are talking about here.

We are talking about a decision that developed mental decision to host the World Cup. In a context where you have a budget, a national budget, which is very limited, in which you have huge huge social needs in Brazil irrespective of the advances that have been made, it’s the same in South Africa.

We’ve had lots of social advances since 1994, but nonetheless there is massive massive backlog of housing, of education, of health facilities and other kinds of things.

The fundamental question here which is being avoided, I think in the most of the debate, is when you are faced with the developmental equations such as that how do you spend your money? What is the best use of infrastructural development and building what infrastructure? Is it better to build water infrastructure, is it better to build public transport infrastructure or is it better to build huge stadiums which people can’t even use and can’t even afford to go to?

I think the answer to that is fairly straightforward. It’s not that the people don’t like soccer. Of course there is going to be enthusiasm, of course there is going to be because just like the Brazilians, the South Africans love their soccer too as well as those people around the world.

But we are talking about political and economic decisions here. Let me remind my colleague as well as your listeners that FIFA demands complete secrecy of all the guarantees that it signed with every government that host the World Cup. So, the population has no idea as we did not. What is being promised to FIFA we found out after the World Cup and the Brazilians don’t know either. And then you find out that what actually happens is that many of the tax-free dollars are leaving the country, they are not reinvested.

The legacy projects don’t happen as they haven’t happened here. The stadiums are left in massive debts because they are privatized and people run away with huge amounts of money and people are left to pick up the pieces. It’s a fundamentally fraud model of the World Cup and that’s what needs to be changed. It’s not about the soccer at all.

Press TV: Dale T McKinley, here the reaction on your face, go ahead.

McKinley: This is exactly, with all due respect Francisco, the argument that was made in South Africa. When the protests took place here, the African National Congress accused there have been a “Third Force” of being right-wing parties. In fact there were four communities that were protesting. And of course there was an economic, after 2008 in particular, and of course there was an economic slowdown as the result of the global financial crisis.

And that actually proves the point which is that it doesn’t matter how big your economic pike is, the question is how it’s distributed in that context. South Africa was on the up in the early 2000 as well when they accepted it for the World Cup and received it. And then came down again and it was just bad time but the larger point is that South Africa and Brazil in the context of their overall development, irrespective of the gains that have been made in the last ten or fifteen years, there is no point in them actually hosting something like this, when in fact they can make use of that very limited funds that are there not simply spend them on infrastructure but to send the kind of message, the developmental message to their own population, that what they are really interested in doing is to taking care of those needs, and addressing those needs and not in spectacle that is basically, and this is the irony of the charge that its right-wing forces and its other people who are trying to undermine progressive governments, is that the people that benefit the most from the World Cup are the elites, are corporate, are Visa, are Coca Cola, are all of the corporate sponsors of the FIFA, in the privatized nature of FIFA and all of the construction companies.

Here in South Africa, the construction companies were called out, colluding on prices of the construction and were fined millions and millions of dollars after the facts, slapped on the wrist, but they were taking public moneys and using them and salting them away in offshore accounts and other kinds of things.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch so to speak and back at home, the people themselves the response they get, that kind of money to develop soccer infrastructure and schools, recreational facilities, all these other kind of things, still four years later, there is nothing of this sort.

I don’t think it’s very helpful to try to be defensive about this. Nobody is saying that Brazil is not a soccer loving-country and that the Brazilian government hasn’t done a lot for its own people. That’s really not the point. The point is whether or not Brazil and South Africa should be hosting this kind of thing and whether or not the present model of the World Cup, which is a privatized, corporatized model, is the one that we want. Brazil and South Africa should be leading the way to changing that situation.

Press TV: Dale T McKinley, in closing, go ahead.

McKinley: I think that basically that’s a false argument because it doesn’t matter whether it’s ten dollars or it’s ten billion dollars or it’s a hundred billion dollars. It’s all the same principle which is if you’ve got a limited budget; Brazil is not a rich country in relation to its own people. It has the largest, with our country in South Africa, the highest Gini coefficient in the world.

That means that the inequality is massive. And you can see it in Sao Paulo, you can see it in Rio, you can see it in Recife, wherever it is, just like it you can see in Johannesburg and Cape Town and Durban, here. That’s the reality of the majority of the people live in.

If the people themselves foresee that their own government is spending their public money, yes there’s some private money, but a large amount of public money and things that are not going to benefit them, then they every right to protest and they have every right to be angry and not wait until to see after the fact as we did in South Africa until it’s too late, but to do it when they can have some impacts.