JOHANNESBURG — There is an undertone of disquiet about the 2010 World Cup. It is difficult to pin down exactly, but the feeling is pervasive and clues to its identity seem to surface daily.
It would be too much to blame it on the country's sad and complicated history, but the legacy of apartheid did come into play Wednesday.
Readers in Johannesburg awoke to see the headline "History is on Bafana's side" emblazoned across the front page of the Star.
The reference was host South Africa's game against Uruguay and also to June 16, 1976, when thousands of schoolchildren in Soweto staged a protest march. The protest escalated over the following days and weeks and, in the resulting and inevitable police crackdown, roughly 700 people died.
"Tomorrow is important, especially for youth," South Africa's captain, Aaron Mokoena, said Tuesday. "It is a really special day for everyone and it would be great to win on the day. It is a day South Africa always remembers."
Sadly, playing on the 34th anniversary of the nation-altering youth march, South Africa was beaten 3-0 by Uruguay and its chances of advancing to the next round were diminished severely.
There was similar misery Wednesday afternoon for European champion Spain, the tournament favorite. It crashed to a 1-0 defeat to upstart Switzerland. The implications are far-reaching.
No team in the 80-year history of the tournament has lost its first game and gone on the win the World Cup. If that holds true, the talent-loaded Spanish might as well pack their vuvuzelas and head home now.
But it is not only on the playing fields of South Africa that the feelings of unease and uncertainty can be found.
In and around the stadiums, there is labor unrest among the World Cup workers, and police have taken over security at half the venues. The workers claim they are being paid a fraction of what they were promised.
Part of it is also unhappiness over the huge amounts spent to stage the World Cup. Trevor Ngwane, a protest organizer in Durban, explained.
"Our protest is not aimed at disrupting the World Cup," he said. "It's just to remind the government they must get their priorities right. When we ask for jobs, better education and houses, they tell us there is no money. But suddenly there are a billion rand to build stadiums."
The tournament might bring in a half-million tourists and their dollars, but the belief is that such money won't trickle down very far. "The World Cup is just for the elite," said one community worker.
Matters have not been helped by the robberies and other criminal acts that are an almost daily occurrence. It breeds mistrust and fear.
Traffic jams that tie up fans for hours, the incessant backdrop drone of the vuvuzelas, the abomination of a ball that has a mind of its own, frigid winter weather, ticketing fiascos and an alarming decrease in the number of goals — 1.56 per game one-quarter of the way through the tournament — all add up to a less-than-celebratory start for 2010. Even the players realize it.
"To be honest, all the games I've watched haven't been exciting," England striker Wayne Rooney said.
But, as South Africans well know, things do get better.
gjones@tribune.com