While the whole world’s attention is focused on South Africa’s 2010 World Cup in soccer where Africa’s own stars like Samuel Eto’o and Didier Drogba are brightly shining, it is easy to ignore what is happening in the shadows of this great organizational global happening. (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here)
I have come across a film from Mariana van Zeller who explores the dark side of this tremendous popular sport and which is called “the new slave trade”. Shocking realities of life under horrendous circumstances mixed with cruel facts and the lure of so called hope and deception make this story more relevant and urgent then all economic negotiations going on at the G 20 meeting in Toronto Canada because it involves literally the lives of thousands of young boys!
The schemes are played at all levels, from the slums and dirt fields in our world, through deceptive, unlicensed agents promising gold at the end of the rainbow, right into the exclusive offices of exclusive European clubs… We have allowed soccer, this wonderful leisure time hobby and sport, to develop into an idol which feeds on the sacrifice and idolatry of young boys who are willing to give it “their all” to somehow make it somewhere at any price; thus the new slave trade was born; as boys sell themselves in prostitution, loosing their virtues and hope, trying under rigid and miserable circumstances to survive.
When will we ever learn that there are no short-cuts and when will we acknowledge the dignity of human life?!
That’s the Way I see it!
John
