Afrikas tid er kommet

The World Cup in South Africa was not about an African team winning the trophy. It was about reverence.

It was about defying odds as much as it was about a shout to the world that as a continent that loves football there is more to our humanity other than wars, disease and jungles.

We even dared to blow our vuvuzela and defined a new way of supporting soccer. For 30 complete days we dazzled the world and gave the networks another brand of news.

It was news that was divorced from such words as tyranny, dictatorship and corruption

We outdid ourselves with super stadiums of architectural supremacy; the world is unanimous that they were better than those in Europe.

More so remember that when South Africa won the right to stage the tournament six years ago, the stadium budget was $396 million. The overall money spent by the time the world cup started was $2.3 billion because there was just so much to prove, so much to give to the world.

I have had the liberty to watch some of the world cup games from Berlin’s famous fan park called the Berlin Fan Mile. There was so much goodwill and appreciation of Africa from Germany football fans.

I sensed a new respect and love for the continent, which was doubted from the day it was announced as the host. There were fears of crime getting out of hand

When Ghana was cheated out of a semi final berth by the “hand of the devil” from Uruguay it was Turkish and Germany friends who protested more than some African brothers and sisters who watched that game with me on that forgetful day.

It is this togetherness with the globe that we sort to establish and found.

After all no one at the end remembered that the host team was in a slumber having been knocked out in the first round.

The rainbow nation, in the absence of its soccer team in the tournament, had its culture and its heritage to showcase and brag over. The radiance of Cape Town, the historical Soweto township, the slums of Alexander Park and the wild life at Kruger Park.

The fireworks that illuminated the sky after Spain lifted the cup was icing on a showcase that started and ended well.

But today I woke up to worrying questions from a network of friends in Africa. The big one being now what does South Africa do with all the state of the art stadiums. Someone also asked what they will do with a nation that is not ready to be told that the benefits in terms of jobs and economic empowerment are in the long term.

Already before the dust of street celebrations for hosting a World Cup that had the third highest attendance figure of all World Cup tournaments according to FIFA, soldiers are in the township heavily armed to stop a bloodbath foreigners living in South Africa have been promised by locals.

As for the stadiums: “With all the negative things that are taking place in Africa, this is a superb moment for us. If we are going to have white elephants, so be it,” said Nobel peace prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

“When you build enormous stadiums you are shifting those resources... from building schools and hospitals and then you have these huge structures standing empty,” the late anti-apartheid campaigner Dennis Brutus said last year.

But there is another side to the argument, which sees the stadiums as much more than mere sporting venues.

Their supporters view the arenas as a way to reverse images of pestilence and war that still blight the continent and to affirm the potential of a young, democratic nation so often beset by self doubt.

Whatever is being said. This was Africa’s time and more is to come.