Letter from South Africa.....July 2010

This is a letter which a colleague of mine wrote to his uncle in London this week. Sums up the mood quite well I thought........ 

I thought that I’d take some time out to tell you a bit about what it’s been like having the World Cup in South Africa. The first few months of 2010 were ones that were filled with much indignation as people sent around clippings from British tabloids and the German press peppered with some choice comments from other countries, all amounting to the same thing namely that the 2010 World Cup was not one to attend. Some of the more amusing ones that I read included threats of death by strangulation courtesy of Africa’s fearsome rock pythons, the others – a little more serious – played up threats of social instability, crime, the lack of preparedness by South Africa’s police services and countless other reasons not to come to South Africa. 

Last Wednesday I sat in the barber’s alongside a German tourist who commented how his friends thought he was crazy to come. He had travelled the country and was loving his experience. Today our news bulletins carried comments from tourists, all of whom raved about the experiences that they’d had in SA. Their stories all echoed a theme that I have heard echoed in bars, restaurants, in media interviews and overheard on trains namely that everyone who came loved the country, loved its people and were having a great time. My German tourist friend commented that he could not believe how different the country was to what he had been told it would be like. It has been so gratifying to read press from around the world that has been unequivocally complimentary. The sniping and the negativity has disappeared and some have even been gracious enough to be publically apologise for their earlier scepticism. Once again South Africa has proved the world wrong and it has been great to be here whilst we’ve done it in such style.

Some of our more left wing press has moaned that the World Cup is a strictly middle-class experience and to be sure the cost of the tickets has meant that it has been beyond the reach of many South Africans, yet the ivory tower commentators have missed the point. On the opening day of the World Cup, my building was woken up at around 03h00 by the security guard trumpeting on his vuvuzela. When asked why, he shrugged his shoulders and said “The World Cup is here”. We smiled wryly and went back to bed. The entire country has been galvanised by this spirit. Some provincial governments chose to buy thousands of tickets to send poorer South Africans to the games. Some have dismissed this gesture as being of the ‘let the people eat cake’ variety. I disagree, I think that it was an inspired gesture to let all in the country experience what greatness we are capable of when we put our minds to it.

Two days before that our company, together with the Football Association had arranged a ticker tape parade for Bafana Bafana, the national squad. Originally envisaged as a bit of a parade for a few hundred people, it brought Sandton – SA’s financial district – to a halt for a few hours as tens of thousands of people flocked to support their team. All the spectators were dressed in the national kit and blew fiercely on their vuvuzelas. Thato’s firm, a conservative law firm in Sandton, stopped work for a few hours and braaied boerewors. The week before all the partners had learnt the Diski Dance, a complicated dance that was meant to be the SA equivalent of the Mexican Wave. As it turned out the vuvuzela blew away all that stood before it. Be that as it may, the sight of suited lawyers blowing plastic trumpets is probably not one that could be replicated in many countries around the world. Indeed, an Irish colleague of mine kept saying “Only in South Africa is this possible”.

That night the opening concert was held in Soweto. In addition to many global mega-stars, the Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu made a guest appearance. Again, my colleague’s words echoed in my mind – where else on earth would you have a 80-something year old Bishop dancing up and down on stage? Only South Africa! The outpouring of support for Bafana reverberated around the country that night and I eventually gave up trying to sleep and wandered down to Long Street – a mere two blocks from my city loft and the heart of Cape Town’s party district. I sent an sms to multiple friends saying “My God, we might have just have f*(&)@#(d up the world” because wherever I looked was a tourist handing a vuvuzela to a South African asking “How does this work?” For the remainder of the World Cup I have seen the most hilarious vuvu blowing competitions as locals and visitors take each other on to demonstrate their prowess. It seems that no vuvu blow can go unanswered and any innocent blast triggers a cacophony of answering blasts. Vuvuzela blowing has turned out to be a team sport as big and as competitive as the soccer itself.  I have no doubt that it is going to echo across the world for years to come.

I have two favourite memories of vuvuzela blowing. My absolute favourite is of Thato’s two year old niece wielding a vuvuzela as long as she is tall and blowing it with complete aplomb. Children throughout the country have taken to it as a way of terrorising and impressing their less competent elders. A close second is of Os du Randt, a Springbok rugby legend attempting it. For a 6 ft 4, 120 kilo man he produced a rather feeble squeak – still he did it in good spirit and, in doing so, encapsulated the spirit that has infused this World Cup – one of being willing to give it a try, to create a smile, to be a little silly, all with aim of making it more fun for all of us.

Last weekend Thato and I were lucky enough to be invited to the Argentina-Mexico game at Soccer City. What a stadium !  Designed to look like a giant calabash it seats over 90,000 spectators. It is a behemoth that dominates the landscape for miles around. It radiates in the rich coppers and browns that define so much of Gauteng’s landscape. Our game experience was seamless, smooth, untroubled, world-class. It was twelve years since I’d been to Soccer City. The transformation was such that it might just as well have been in a different country in a different century. Indeed, it feels in many respects like South Africa has fast-forwarded into a new world. It is now possible for me to hop on a bus a few hundred meters from my flat, be whisked to the airport and arriving in Johannesburg I can catch a train that will have me at my office in central Sandton in a mere 15 minutes. It is like the Heathrow-London connection – only a little cleaner J Indeed one Brit commented ‘you can smell how new the concrete is’. The transport systems are more integrated than they’ve ever been and certainly are now at a level that they are world-class.

Of course the World Cup has had it’s sad moments – the biggest of them caused by Uruguay. First their 3-0 thrashing of Bafana ensured that despite valiant games against France and Mexico we did not advance to the round of 16. Second, and even more devastatingly, was their victory over Ghana. I watched the game with dozens of passionate Africans, most of whom could not hide their tears at the end of the match. It just did not feel fair to lose in such a cynical way. I spent most of Saturday sulking determined to ignore the World Cup, but once again the Pied Piper trumpeting of the vuvuzela was too alluring to resist and I headed out onto the streets. I am so glad that I did. It was a clear winter’s day and tens of thousands of people flocked along the fan walk. Every few hundred meters there were musicians playing South African tunes and the vibrancy was incredible. I walked to the Waterfront were over 150,000 had congregated to watch the game in various venues and then walked back to Greenmarket Square to catch the rest of the game. I guess that’s the joy of a city like Cape Town that you can walk to the stadium in back in about 35 minutes and be surrounded on all sides by gorgeous greenery, mountains and the ocean. It was a special walk and wherever I looked where jubilant fans framed by one of the world’s most beautiful city-scapes.

Tomorrow is the first of the semi-finals. I hope that the Netherlands humiliates Uruguay. I am not alone, there are about 1 billion African who feel the same way. Sunday is the final of the World Cup but hopefully not the end for us. The World Cup has been a success but it is the culmination of 16 years of hard work by South Africans. We are all too often in the headlines for the wrong reasons, because of crime, corruption and stupid statements by silly people. 

All of that serves to obscure the enormity of that which we’ve achieved as a nation. Achievements that have accrued over the past decade and a half and have laid the foundations for the success that we’ve achieved over the past 4 weeks. This time around our success was not a miracle. It is a culmination of hard work by dedicated and passionate people. It is the end point of work that took a country that was collapsing under debt with failing infrastructure and teetering at the brink of civil war to a country that can host the biggest media spectacle in the world and do so successfully. More importantly it has done so in a way that is uniquely South African, in a way that has left the world a little more rowdy than it was before but with a lot more joy, a lot more belief in the power of humanity, in power of Africans to shape their own destiny. This has been my World Cup experience.

Love,

Karl