Contest 'orgy of chauvinism'

The World Cup is a "month-long orgy of chauvinism and mime-show of war" among nations, says newly crowned Nobel literature laureate J. M. Coetzee.

South African Coetzee made the comments in a 1995 article on the World Cup, reports the South African Press Association.

The piece has been dusted off following Coetzee's award last week for his novels, which the Nobel committee said exposed the "cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality of western civilisation".

Coetzee said the World Cup was not just a sporting event. In South Africa, in particular, it had unabashedly been promoted as a nation-building exercise, suing the concept of a "Rainbow Nation" as master-image.

This was based on the premise that nationhood was a collective state of mind, that "if a group of people can be encouraged to believe they are a nation and to act together as a nation, then they are a nation".