CAPE TOWN (Sapa-dpa) - Hosting the football World Cup is a "shot in the arm" for South Africa, as it still struggles to overcome deep-seated divisions, according to one of the country's moral heavyweights, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.
In an exclusive interview with the German Press Agency dpa in Cape Town Wednesday, the 78-year-old Nobel peace laureate said he hoped the tournament would help repair the damage caused by a recent spate of divisive political rhetoric.
"It just gave us a good shot in the arm because we haven't had, you know, this ... feeling good about ourselves too much. There have been things that didn't make you feel too thrilled," said the outspoken bishop, who won the Nobel Prize in 1984 for his doctrine of peaceful resistance to apartheid.
Two years later, Tutu became the first black archbishop of Cape Town, at one point leading street demonstrations in his purple cassock. He retired in 1996.
He said the level of political discourse in the country has nosedived since the late 1990s, when Nelson Mandela was president.
"It's really been gutter level, most of it," Tutu said.