The opening of the International Federation of Football (FIFA) 2010 World Cup finals began in South Africa this week has excited football (soccer) fans across the globe and also provides an opportunity for reflections on the nature of "national identity" in today's globalized society.
Until the 2002 FIFA World Cup held jointly in Japan and South Korea, the quadrennial contest for the global football championship had almost entirely been the preserve of Europe and Latin America, but is now being hosted for the first time by an African nation.
The arrival of the World Cup also marks the realization of a long cherished national dream of South Africans of all ethnic backgrounds and political beliefs.
Indeed, Taiwan can learn much from the effect that the 2010 World Cup and the 1995 Rugby World Cup, commemorated in the popular motion picture "Invictus," have had in healing the wounds inflicted by the South African Afrikaner elite's decades-long system of racial separation known as "apartheid" and the struggle against this oppressive system by the African National Congress and other black liberation forces led by former president and 25-year political prisoner Nelson Mandela.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who chaired the landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission, lauded the 2010 World Cup as a great achievement for both South Africa and the entire African continent.
In a statement to FIFA, Tutu also expressed the hope that the World Cup "will reinforce unity in our country" and remarked that "we do not have to share similar opinions on everything, but we can also disagree amicably respecting each other's dignity."
Significantly, Tutu added that the event would provide South Africans a chance to "share our warmth and humanity with the rest of the world."
Fifteen years ago, the World Cup in Rugby to South Africa arrived only one year after the end of apartheid and after Mandela had won the presidency in the first general elections held with universal adult suffrage in April 1994.
Still stunned from the sudden fall of the white supremacist regime, South African society remained rent by deep divisions and antagonisms between the black majority and the white minority, which itself was divided between Afrikaners and more liberal South African English.
As related in the recent film, Mandela skilfully used the World Rugby Cup, which was won in a major upset by the South Africa national team, to heal the divisions and unite all South Africans behind the "Springboks."
In the wake of the end of the Cold War and the spread of "real time" telecommunications technologies, World Cup competitions have attracted increasing attention with an estimated four billion viewers for this year's competition.
Under this tide of globalization, world athletic competitions have become integral parts of the lives of billions of people in all corners of the globe and provide a common peaceful platform to link virtually all of humanity.
Nevertheless, such sporting events also contain the core element of "win or lose" competition that also encourages people to take different stands and express intense identification with rival national or continental teams.
Hence, the holding of World Cup tournaments both links all of humanity in peaceful interaction and also encourages divisions and rivalries as different national teams strive for victory by figuratively defeating other nations.
Taiwan is not 'Chinese Taipei'
As a result, athletic competition has also become an important instrument for nations to gain or regain a noticeable place on the world stage and consolidate national identity and confidence among their citizenry.
Examples include the participation and triumph of the "Springboks" in the 1995 World Rugby Cup symbolized the re-entry of the once pariah South Africa into international society and as Latin American nations have strived to overcome the world domination of the U.S. and Western Europe on the soccer fields.
Taiwan now faces crises in both "identity" and "international status."
In the 1970s, the stellar performance of Taiwan's Little League teams did indeed boost Taiwan identity and confidence across ethnic and political lines and the performance of individual Taiwan athletes in recent international competition has also provided needed encouragement to our troubled society.
However, the continued use of the denigrating "Chinese Taipei" moniker in world competition both discounts the positive benefits to Taiwan's international status and domestic unity as most citizens naturally have difficulty accepting such a bizarre "identity."
This fact has spurred many citizens to take their own "direct action" and wave the official national flag or the unofficial green and white "Taiwan independence" flag or banners with the name "Taiwan" during sporting events at home and abroad, often in the face of physical attacks by ultra "great China nationalists" from the People's Republic of China or obstruction by local police, even in Kuomintang administered cities in Taiwan itself.
We urge President Ma Ying-jeou and his KMT administration to intensify efforts to help Taiwan athletes improve their performance in world sporting events and to follow the example set during last July's World Games in Kaohsiung and promote Taiwan as "Taiwan" in world sporting events.
Source: Taiwan News Online - Editorial 2010/06/17
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