Accused of Ambush marketing and incitement for promoting an anti-xenophobic rally, filmmaker Giuliano Martiniello, research student Samantha

Sencer-Mura and director of Centre for Civil Society (CCS) Patrick Bond were detained at the Durban FIFA fan fest. I personally assisted to the scene.On the same day, we were at quarter finals stage, FIFA was promoting its say no to racism campaign. Days before, an environmentalist was arrested in the same location while leafleting about FIFA-related environmental damage. It is interesting to compare what Sepp Blatter says as regards to that on FIFA website, and what Policemen told Patrick Bond, according to his reconstruction. "The solution to this problem [racism], as to any other, lies firstly in identifying it and acknowledging its existence," says FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter. "Anyone who complacently maintains that racism is impossible in their territory is not only wrong but irresponsible."1 And here is Bond reconstruction of his exchange with the policeman: The police superintendent replies, No distribution of pamphlets, especially which mention xenophobia. Ah, the underlying problem had emerged. The reason the pamphlet was banned was not just procedural it was political. You are reminding [people] of xenophobia. Even myself I had forgot about that thing, but now you write it down. Do you think it is not a problem? I asked. Surely Durban police know that a city councillor is amongst those still being tried for the xenophobic murder of a Tanzanian and Zimbabwean last year, and that the streets and worksites are thick with tension and insults against immigrants and refugees. His rebuttal: It happened. Then government stopped it there. Im sure you know that Jacob Zuma said xenophobias a problem, I replied, and that after meeting his national executive in May, the president said the ANC branches must work against xenophobia, I reminded the superintendent. There is no xenophobia, he insisted but nervously2. Evidently, certain thematic are only accepted whether they are spelled out by FIFA, in this sense we are here facing a quintessential ideological work by FIFA which with one hand is rallying against racism and with the other is preventing others from doing so. To be sure, the overzealous policeman was not acting in a legal vacuum. Quite the contrary, since FIFA by-laws explicitly forbid to engage in conduct which expresses racist, xenophobic cause, charity or ideological concern related materials, including but not limited to banners, signs, symbols and leaflets, objects or clothing, which could impair the enjoyment of the Event by other spectators, or detract from the sporting focus of the Event3. Referring to Johannesburg, Van Der Walt (232) criticises SA laws allowing too much freedom to privatise public space as in the case of gated communities or inner city complexes. In particular, he quotes a sentence is quoted in which a public protest was interdicted on the ground that it would infringe the rights to subjective comfort of employees and clients of the attorneys when they passed by the picketers to enter and exit the offices of the attorneys. The reasoning of the court clearly sought to extend the considerations of peace and quiet to which one is entitled in the private realm of the home to the public space that one enters when one ventures into streets. Here, as in the FIFA fan fest case, a restrictive law is tailed on an affective status, a feeling peace, quite, enjoyment as if the law is supposed to guarantee protection to a sort of brandscape, being it that of an office or a Fan Fest. Law becomes tied to the production and protection of brandscape. This is example shows how the logic of ME spills over the city, how the city as a flow of affect is increasingly managed and controlled in atmospheric and rhythmic terms. After all, this is also what is implied by the very definition of anti-social behaviour as alarming and distressing behaviour, subjective notions which can understandably be widened with a certain discretion, exactly in the way an anti-xenophobic cause was forbidden in the Fan Fest by referring to a by-law legislating against xenophobic cause. If, in the paper of Van der Walt, a second instance is provided in which the interdiction to the right to protest was bound to the need
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http://www.fifa.com/newscentre/news/newsid=518183.html http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,2089
FIFA stadium code of conduct 4.e, 5.6.e

to demonstrate concrete evidence of the protest causing disruption to peace and quiet, the special legal status granted to FIFA on public space allows for such nuances to be easily overlooked. Here, much like in many example of anti-terrorism legislation, law is allowed to act unilaterally in protection of the atmosphere, being that an attempt to diminish fear or increase enthusiasm. This resonates as quite similar to the ground on which FIFA legislation prevented political protests in Stadia and Fan Parks, as impairing spectators fruition of the event. Another sentence however tied. Obviously, in the case of FIFA, the special legal status of public space during the world cup means that such nuance is not possible and that unavoidably the law would decide in unilateral way, materialising a proper binarisation of allowed-non allowed in which the space for judicial discretion is closed. It is evident.