South Africa deports World Cup soccer hooligans

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Well that didn’t take long. South African police reported yesterday that they had deported ten Argentine “soccer hooligans” who had arrived in advance of this month’s FIFA World Cup, scheduled to kick off this coming Friday. It was alleged the men were part of the notorious “barras bravas,” Latin American soccer groups renowned for their football-related violence.

Soccer and hooliganism have a long and violent history, especially in regions like Europe and in South America. The “bravas” have a particularly infamous reputation among World Cup organizers. Incidents involving the groups have resulted in fights and hospitalizations during the 1986 World Cup in Mexico and the 1990 World Cup in Italy. Apparently the Argentine hooligans aren’t the only unruly fans getting the boot from this year’s Cup – around 3,200 English fans with a history of soccer violence have also had their passports held by authorities to prevent them from heading to South Africa.

Given that hooligans the world over have given soccer a bad name, it’s not surprising to find South Africa is trying to crack down on this type of behavior. Let’s hope this year’s games are celebrated for their remarkable sportsmanship – not the juvenile behavior that has marred the sport for too long.

(Image: Flickr/Vironevaeh)

New tour takes visitors into LA’s ganglands

by Katie Hammel on

Tourists looking for a thrill in Los Angeles can now take a bus tour of the city’s most dangerous ganglands. For $65, LA Gang Tours takes visitors around the city, pointing out gang graffiti and stopping at sights like the Los Angeles Riverbed, Florence Avenue, and the Pico Union Graffiti Lab.

It seems tourists are always drawn to places with a dangerous auras and violent pasts, places that are the complete opposite of our comfortable lives at home. The question is, do we go to these places, places like the slums of Mumbai, the townships of Johannesburg or the streets of South Central LA, because we want to understand what life is like for the people there, or do we go to gawk or just so we can say “I’ve been there”? And do these tours actually help the communities that are put on display, or do they make them a spectacle?

LA Gang Tours was created by Alfred Lomas, a former gang member, who says the tour will create 10 part-time jobs for ex-gang members who will lead tours and share their own stories. He says his goal is to help residents of South Central,”to give profits from the tours back to these areas for economic growth and development, provide job/entrepreneur training, micro-financing opportunities and to specialize in educating people from around the world about the Los Angeles inner city lifestyle, gang involvement and solutions.”I’d actually be curious to take the tour, which is scheduled to run once per month. It sounds like, in this case, the tour may be run in a way that takes a more anthropological, rather than exploitative, look at the community. The tour bus is unmarked, and out of respect for area residents, riders on the tour are not permitted to take photos or video.

While in Cape Town, I had the opportunity to tour Robben Island, the prison where political “criminals” were held during apartheid. When the tour guide, himself a former prisoner, was asked why he would do this – lead tours and relive the pain of his imprisonment every day – for a living, he responded with two reasons. One, he said, was because he wanted people to know what happened. The second was that every boatload of tourists that came to the island meant one more person who would have a job.

Perhaps it’s naive to think that welcoming a bus-full of tourists once a month could help solve the many problems of the area. But if offering the tours keeps one more ex-gang member employed running tours and out of gang life, well, at least it’s a start.

[via Chicago Tribune]

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