Neglecting the Voice of Impoverished South Africans in Preparation for the 2010 World Cup

The South African impoverished people have been largely unable to influence political decision-making during the Apartheid era and post-Apartheid. This research focuses on the influence of wealth, information asymmetry and perceptions on the impoverished people’s participation with regard to the stadium building process in Cape Town and Nelspruit. The factors of wealth, information asymmetry and perceptions are identified through rigorous literature review, which placed the impoverished people’s participation through the perspective of civic political participation and democracy. The wealth factor displayed a layered power balance with FIFA and the national South African government at the top, local government and local affluent in the middle and local impoverished people at the bottom of the pyramid. The information asymmetry factor for the Cape Town and Nelspruit cases negatively affected the impoverished people’s participation, as they lacked key information that could have...Show moreThe South African impoverished people have been largely unable to influence political decision-making during the Apartheid era and post-Apartheid. This research focuses on the influence of wealth, information asymmetry and perceptions on the impoverished people’s participation with regard to the stadium building process in Cape Town and Nelspruit. The factors of wealth, information asymmetry and perceptions are identified through rigorous literature review, which placed the impoverished people’s participation through the perspective of civic political participation and democracy. The wealth factor displayed a layered power balance with FIFA and the national South African government at the top, local government and local affluent in the middle and local impoverished people at the bottom of the pyramid. The information asymmetry factor for the Cape Town and Nelspruit cases negatively affected the impoverished people’s participation, as they lacked key information that could have assisted them in their political participation. The perception factor showed that the impoverished people had little trust in the political system as the result of corruption and false promises made in the past, which negatively affected their political participation. The stylized nature of the research, by exclusively examining these factors, limited the research, as it did not fully consider a myriad of other factors and the influence of these factors on the decision-making process.Show less

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Neglecting the Voice of Impoverished South Africans in Preparation for the 2010 World Cup