2010 World Cup: Jemele Hil on HIV-Positive, Co-Ed Soccer Leagues – ESPN Soccernet

South Africa has garnered much praise, internationally, for its hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. But in a suburb of Johannesburg, other soccer games are taking place, where the players are all female and all wear jerseys with bold lettering "HIV Positive." It's a game played by HIV patients from around the city and surrounding area, with doctors and activists in attendance, organized to help return some visibility to the issue of HIV in Africa generally and South Africa in specific. If everyone is looking at soccer, then HIV activists will play soccer. South Africa has the third highest rate of HIV among adult populations of any nation in the world – some 18% of adult South Africans are HIV positive. And while the current administration has generally had proactive and forward moving policies on this, activists and doctors fear that the World Cup has taken both attention and funds away from the struggle with HIV.

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World Cup Fever: Has it Really Led to an Increase in Trafficking?

"Mainstream media outlets have been reporting that 40,000 women have been trafficked into South African brothels for the World Cup," Audacia Ray writes. "That’s a pretty horrifying statistic—except that there simply aren’t any good citations that confirm it." That statistic has, in fact, been a favorite of alarming news reports since 2006, and Laura Augustín points out that it was just as uncorroborated then as it is now.

"To be fair," Audacia says, "there is some critique of the World Cup trafficking scare happening in mainstream media…but the voices of South Africans, and particularly people who work in the sex industry, were entirely absent from the articles." According to South African Researchers Marlise Richter and Tamlyn Monson, "there is no evidence" that the World Cup increased trafficking crimes. Instead, they say, it's some people's expectation.

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