LONDON - When South Africans heard that they had been awarded the 2010 Fifa World Cup, they were jubilant. It would be the first time the tournament had been hosted by an African nation. They would not be so jubilant now if they know what the British media are saying, and what warnings the British and United States embassies are issuing through the internet. The warnings, called "alerts" or "advisories," come close to telling the respective citizens that if they want to attend the games, they do so at their peril.

The present critical view the media and television in Britain take of South Africa is not all that different from the former hammering of apartheid. Why? We will come to this later.

Earlier this week, Channel 4, the highly rated daily news hour, presented a programme that was quite chilling.  It took watchers into Cape Town's Khayelitsha and told them about gangs and drugs and murder and robberies. Call it comment if you like, but it was factual, chapter and verse, and ugly. Several other UK newspapers have taken the same approach, so much so that my Cypriot greengrocer asked me, "Why are the papers so hostile to South Africa?"

In The Times (June 4), Jonathan Clayton (formerly the newspaper's correspondent in South Africa) wrote that his own home had been burgled and almost all the contents of the study taken.

 "We'd slept through the entire episode, though suspicions lingered that the burglars had used a spray to make one of us sleep more deeply - a favourite tactic of housebreakers...Somehow, and with great skill, they managed to navigate alarms, electric fences and private security patrols...With belated clarity, I understood why so many of our neighbours had packs of dogs."

Clayton's report is wholly balanced. He had not been long in Johannesburg at the time, and neighbours advised him to upgrade his security after the burglary, which he did. One neighbour suggested that because his house had been worked over, probably he would be left alone for a while. Three weeks later, the burglars were back. As Clayton remarks, "In South Africa everyone has a horror story to tell."

The "alert" notices issued by the diplomats (they issue them for all countries) are surprisingly frank, instead of treading their usual delicate path. The UK notice is as detached and cautious as usual (as is the US "alert"), but it warns nevertheless:

"There is an underlying threat from terrorism. Attacks, although unlikely, could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers". Interestingly, both the U.S. "alert" and the UK one, begin their advice with this warning about terrorism.

The UK advice continues: "South Africa has a very high level of crime, including rape and murder...There may be an increase in opportunistic crime during the World Cup...Given the high level of HIV/AIDS in the country, you should seek immediate medical advice if you are sexually assaulted or otherwise injured. As elsewhere, thieves operate at international airports, bus and railway stations...It is recommended that where possible, and where local regulations permit, hold luggage is vacuum wrapped. Passport theft is common.

"Keep large amounts of money, expensive jewellery, cameras and cell phones out of sight...Avoid townships in Gauteng province...avoid Berea and Hillbrow. There is a high level of muggings around the Rotunda bus terminus in the Central Business District...There is a high incidence of credit card fraud and fraud involving ATMs." And so on.

The U.S. embassy "alert" is similarly frank: "There is a heightened risk that extremist groups will conduct terrorist acts within South Africa in the near future." It adds: "While driving, keep doors locked and windows closed ... and when stopping at intersections at night or in isolated locations, leave enough space in front of your vehicle for a quick exit."

To return to the question of why the foreign media (not only in Britain and the U.S.) are "hostile" to SA, a possible explanation would be that they are just rediscovering South Africa. Hammering apartheid was easy: People known as "Afrikaners" or "Boers" were treating the majority black population abominably (as indeed they were) and they needed to be hammered.

Then when the Africans took over, and installed an icon called Nelson Mandela as their president, South Africa's problems were resolved, and the country could safely be left to pursue its future course.

However, South Africans (there were also white, coloured and Indian communities) seemed to be divided, and the infighting got worse as the years passed. President Thabo Mbeki sacked his deputy president Jacob Zuma, and before long he himself was sacked by the ANC and Zuma became president. Then everyone started fighting everyone else.

The situation was far too complex to understand, so the media's attention drifted off to other terrains. Fewer and fewer column inches were allocated to the country that was supposed to herald an African "renaissance" - to be the "engine" that would drive a hopeless continent into a new future.

Then came the Fifa moment, and just before the actual games began in South Africa, the media started dispatching its commentators to the forgotten land to report on just what kind of country it had become in the 16 years after the ANC takeover.

The commentators (or most of them) were startled. They discovered what seemed to be apartheid in reverse, or something like that. It was all rather blurred, but there were some top rate stories waiting to be written. Racism, for example, was alive and well; crime was among the highest in the world; the ANC's youth league appeared to be running the country (sort of); new millionaires came from nowhere in the African community; power and money were the beginning and end of politics; and so forth.

So the foreign media grasped whichever story struck them as having the biggest impact, and they wrote about corruption, brutalism, murder and rape, and the rest of the whole sorry scene. Behind these "stories," of course lay just as chilling political realities.

Whether my Cypriot greengrocer will understand the complexities of this situation - well, why unweave Mandela's rainbow for him? It is better not to know.

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