
The Rageh Omaar Report - South Africa - The party is over
South Africa spent a month in June 2010 as host of the FIFA World Cup, a tournament that gave the country a rare run of good news after years of headlines about crime, corruption, and poverty. Journalist Rageh Omaar returns once the stadiums empty and the cameras leave, asking what the country actually gained and what problems the World Cup simply postponed. He talks with South Africans who lost jobs in the recession that hit alongside the tournament, and with people navigating a bureaucracy still shadowed by allegations of corruption inside the governing African National Congress. The report moves between the optimism of the World Cup weeks, when the country's diversity and infrastructure were on global display, and the harder daily reality of unemployment lines and stalled service delivery afterward. Omaar also meets community organizers and local officials trying to turn the tournament's momentum into lasting change. The film's real question is whether a month of unity can outlast the economic and political pressures waiting on the other side of it.