When hundreds of thousands of Brazilians protest against the Fifa World Cup, there must be something wrong with the competition.
After all, South America's most populous nation is thought to be the spiritual home of the beautiful game, where the cliché of a football match on every dusty street corner, on every sandy beach, rings true.
Brazil are the five-time World Cup champions, and so hosting the 2014 edition of the competition there was supposed to guarantee a festival of 'joga bonito.'
Instead, at the pre-World Cup dress rehearsal of the Confederations Cup, a critical mass of football loving Brazilians have made it clear that they don't want either competition in their homeland.
As South Africans, we too were subjected to the dubious morality of the Fifa World Cup, when the competition rode roughshod over our country in 2010. We too had our reservations.
In our country, children graduate from schools without classrooms, unable to read or write. Millions of people live in squalor without access to running water or flush toilets. Treatable diseases kill us in our droves. And it is an incontrovertible fact that in South Africa, the rich keep getting richer, while the poor just can't seem to get up.
Did we really need the World Cup then, with its flashy new stadia, some of which would cost less to demolish than to retain as eye-catching white elephants?
Surely the billions the tax payer lavished on hosting the World Cup could have been used to further South Africa's maddening inequality? At the very least, the revenue generated by the World Cup could have been spent on the development of grassroots football.
Of course, it is not football's responsibility to take care of a country's social development. But apart from a few of us watching the best teams on the planet live, what good actually came of the 2010 World Cup?
We had these reservations. But when Bafana Bafana took to the field against Mexico and for the month that followed, we happily forgot them, seduced as we were by the football in our midst.
What is happening in Brazil now does not seem like it will go away so easily, however.
According to Amnesty International, poor Brazilians have been forcibly removed from their homes by armed policeman to make way for World Cup infrastructure.
And just like in South Africa, billions of dollars have been spent on football, at the cost of Brazil's failing health, education and transport infrastructures.
Former Brazil striker Romario has questioned the morality of ignoring Brazil's problems to host the World Cup, and even current star Neymar says he identifies with his nation's grievances. We all love football and especially the World Cup. But in light of events in Brazil, the time has come to reconsider the painful (and frankly illegal) sacrifices poor countries in particular are forced to make in order to host it.
The beautiful game has always been the people's game. And we should not accept anything from football that undermines our humanity.
By Jared Chaitowitz
Follow Jared on twitter @JaredSLinter
