Vuvuzelas, Walkie-Talkies and Madiba Magic

Sarah-Leah Pimentel

 

The mood in the stadium was electric. The piercing wails of vuvuzelas[1] could be heard far beyond the confines of the stadium. I was still standing in a slowly-snaking line waiting to get into Loftusversveld Stadium. I’d never had a reason to come here before, the bastion of South African rugby. But I wasn’t here for rugby. I was here for the soccer. I was here for the World Cup.

The crowd around me was impatient. We wanted to be inside, singing Shosholoza[2] and showing the foreigners that we have gees.[3] Complete strangers struck up conversations with one another. South Africans and foreigners. A few words in English. Hand gestures. Excitement on every face. It didn’t matter that we didn’t understand each other. All that mattered is that we all spoke one language today: soccer.

As South Africans, we were excited to be playing host to the world’s greatest soccer tournament. We were showing the world that we could do it. Just months before, there were fears we wouldn’t be ready. The stadiums, airports, and the roads were far behind schedule. The FIFA president Sepp Blatter had become an almost de facto president, usurping the powers of our own government, telling us what we could and couldn’t do.

Blatter kept threatening to take the tournament away from us, citing failed construction deadlines, crime, terrorist threats. They were worried it would be a fiasco. The trouble was, they just didn’t understand how South Africa works. We never get anything right the first time. But we get there in the end. By hook or by crook.

And we did. Miraculously all the construction work ended within days of the opening match.

It felt a little surreal to stand in line to watch Spain play Chile in a first round match with my commune buddies. I was draped in a Spanish flag I’d bought off one of the hawkers[4] down the road near where I had parked my car. Dave was wearing a Chilean cap that a South American fan had exchanged for his South African scarf. Pauline was wrapped in as many flags as she could find!

It didn’t really matter. We were swimming with the tide of national pride. We weren’t there to support a specific team. We just wanted to be a part of the South African magic. And we wanted everyone who came to South Africa to enjoy the party!

Finally, after passing through several checkpoints, we presented our tickets and made our way into the stadium. We got lost trying to find our seats. So, we just sat down in two empty ones. We could always move if the real occupants showed up. That is the South African way.

The field was far below us. The players warming up were just tiny specks. But we had a bird’s eye view of the entire stadium. The game hadn’t started yet, but the crowd was already in high spirits. Everyone was trying to sing their songs above the din of the vuvuzelas.

“Sjoe, this is a lekker vibe!” Dave shouted into my ear. I nodded in agreement, knowing he’d never hear me above the noise. Instead, I snapped pictures of the crowd. I wanted to remember this moment forever. More than that, I wanted time to stand still. South Africa at its best.

That’s the trouble with South Africa. We have so much good to show, but it’s never the good stuff that makes international headlines. We’re often in the news for all the wrong reasons – the highest crime rates in the world. The greatest levels of inequality between rich and poor. High unemployment. The endless pictures of our squatter camps. Xenophobic violence. Corruption. Scandal.

It was as if the world didn’t give us enough of a chance after apartheid. I sometimes felt like the media was always looking for reasons to show up our failures and ignore our successes. We also are a self-critical people. We see the worst in ourselves and forget the best.

The facts tell a different story. We transitioned out of apartheid without a civil war. Nelson Mandela’s vision for a non-racial South Africa may have been utopic, but his belief carried us through the first difficult years after 1994. Madiba[5] is probably one of the great leaders of the 20th century on par with of Mahatma Ghandi, who incidentally, also developed the art of passive resistance here in South Africa.

Mandela served for five years and then passed the baton. Too soon, the magic of Madiba’s rainbow nation faded and hard reality set in. So far, no one has lived up to expectations. His successor made us an international laughingstock for his handling of the HIV/Aids pandemic and did little to build the much-anticipated momentum for economic recovery.

Now, it was even worse. Jacob Zuma started his presidency with a rape allegation. In the trial, he denied the rape charges, but consented to having unprotected, consensual sex with the daughter of a colleague. Asked whether he was not afraid of contracting Aids, he simply said he’d taken a shower. A cartoonist depicted him with a shower head above him. And it stuck! Another national disgrace.

And then there was the xenophobic violence. Living in a part of Johannesburg that contained a large percentage of immigrants from other African countries, I had watched first-hand in 2008 as my friends and their families had their businesses destroyed and their lives threatened by South Africans who claimed that the presence of the kwerekwere[6] was the reason for all of the country’s economic woes. As the daughter of Angolan immigrants, the targeted violence affected me deeply and weakened my faith in the country that is the only home I have ever known.

South Africa needed this World Cup. We needed to lift our heads, raise our collective spirits. In times of trouble, sport has always united us. Our sporting gees reminds us of who we want to be. Who we can be. This is what I was thinking as I tried to capture the mood of the stadium on film. I wanted to freeze forever the moment when the diversity of 30,000 people in Loftusversveld gave me cause to celebrate our common humanity, rather than reasons for conflict.

The moment had come. The players took the field. The national anthems sounded across the stadium. The whistle blew. The game began. I sat back in my seat, soaking in the incredible euphoria of watching a World Cup match in my own backyard. I didn’t care who won. To be here, in this moment, was everything.

–/–

The entire month of the World Cup was a jol.[7] I don’t think I slept very much. But I certainly ate, drank, and breathed every moment of the Cup. I was also a lot younger and, at 29, could function with copious amounts of alcohol and little sleep!

My job that year was focused on the security preparations for the World Cup and monitoring for any threats against players and fans. This is how I got to watch most of the matches as part of my responsibilities (a dream job, right?), scanning the crowds pictured on the screen for any sign of a disturbance. It meant long hours at the office. Days started at 6 am and ended after the last game of the evening, often at 10:30 at night.

There was an official fan park across the road from my office, so most nights, instead of heading home for some much-needed sleep, I’d walk across to the Fan Zone and meet up with friends who had been there for several hours already, drinking and striking up friendships with the tourists who had come to experience an African World Cup.

One night I arrived at the designated pub to find that my pretty Kenyan friend, Pauline, had five Argentinean guys lapping up every word that came out of her mouth. Except they didn’t speak much English and she didn’t speak any Spanish! One of them was making a poor attempt to seduce her by telling her that he “make big sausage” while pointing at his genitalia.

Pauline motioned for me to walk with her to the bar. “How do I get rid of them?” she asked me.

“Tell them to piss off,” I suggested.

“Eish, no, let’s make them pay, especially the one, you know, ‘Sausage Guy’,” she laughed with a wicked glint in her eye. Pauline could be impulsive at times. But also dangerous. Whatever she was planning was not going to end well for the Argentineans.

“Nee, man, Pauline. Let’s dump them and go somewhere else.”

“No way! They came here looking for an African experience! I’ll give them an African experience!”

“What are you up to?” I asked, intrigued.

“Watch and learn,” Pauline retorted with a naughty smile.

She made me buy beers for the group and take them to the table with the promise that she would soon be back. “Tell them I’ve gone to organize an African treat for them.”

Armed with beer, I rejoined our other friend Dave who clearly didn’t have the Argentineans as enthralled as Pauline had. Dave looked at me and mouthed: “Where’s Paulie?”

I rolled my eyes: “Getting a surprise for our friends, apparently.” Dave looked at me and winked. He knew Pauline well.

Meanwhile, I tried to keep the Argentineans talking. I speak Spanish, so communication wasn’t a problem. But they weren’t interested in me. “Donde está la negrita?” Sausage Guy asked.

“Está preparando una supresa para ti,” I said. That got his interest. His friends egged him on, making crude sexual jokes.

Some 20 minutes later, Pauline returned, armed with several covered plates of food. None of it smelt very appetizing.

Using me as her interpreter, she explained that she’d ordered various South African delicacies and that only the most virile men can eat them. She told Sausage Guy that he could take her back to his hotel room if he ate everything she’d ordered.

The game was on.

Sausage Guy puffed up like an arrogant soccer player ready to face an inferior opponent.

“Is easy,” he said in broken English. Leering at her, he added: “I eat dis. After, I eat you.”

Pauline gave him a seductive smile and teased: “Only if you are a real man.”

She started him off slowly, offering him some pap en wors.[8] That was easy enough.

Next, she offered him a Gatsby. This is a foot-long loaf of bread stuffed with slap chips,[9] steak, fried eggs, salad and sauce. After the pap en wors, I could see Sausage Guy was starting to exhibit the strain, but he was determined not to admit defeat, aided no doubt by some high testosterone levels.

Dave and I helped by keeping a steady supply of beer coming his way. The Argentinean’s friends cheered him on, but their faces showed relief that Pauline hadn’t chosen them.

Next came some mogodu.[10] Sausage Guy was looking a little green by this time and sweating profusely, but he ate a few mouthfuls.

He pushed the plate away. Pauline pushed it back toward him. “You must finish,” she said.

Sausage Guy continued to pick at it with tremendous effort, belching his way through.

“Now, for dessert,” smiled Pauline. A shadow of relief crossed Sausage Guy’s face. But the half-lit pub didn’t hide his extreme discomfort.

Pauline uncovered the final plate. “These are called walkie talkies,” she stated and looked at me to explain in Spanish that these are fried chicken feet prepared in a peri-peri batter.

Sausage Guy looked at me with a combination of horror and anger. He turned to Pauline, pointed a finger in her face and half-heartedly threatened her: “In bed, you pay.”

She teased him: “If you make it to bed. You have to eat 10 walkie talkies first.”

He picked up the first piece and bit into it. The crunchiness of the fried chicken feet and the heat of the peri-peri made him retch. He shook his head.

“You must eat them all,” Pauline said.

He took a second piece, bit into it, but no sooner was it in his mouth than he turned away from the plate and drunkenly tried to get up. He didn’t get far. He vomited everything we’d fed him right there on the floor.

At this point Pauline got up and poured what was left of his beer over him. She bent over him and said: “You were never man enough for me anyway.”

We gathered up our things and left Sausage Guy’s friends to take care of him. There was no doubt he would have a strong babelaas[11] the next day. And hopefully he learned the lesson: South Africans (and Kenyans) can be very friendly, but don’t mess with us!

–//–

And just like that, South Africa’s World Cup came to an end. A month of celebration, hard work, too much drinking, too little sleep, and copious amounts of adrenalin. That is the epitome of youth. Youth is a time for living life to the fullest and not thinking about the consequences. It is living an eternal now, a time of staying forever young.

All these years later, I look back on the World Cup as a magical time. The friends I had then have moved to other countries or cities. I have also moved on. Those easy connections and spontaneous activities are much harder now. Some of us have lost touch, and bonds have been broken that may never be fixed again.

Perhaps the world too has become a harder place. It is as if the underlying magic that formed an invisible layer on every part of life has dissipated.

Or perhaps the magic ended when Mandela died. His appearance at the final match of the World Cup became one of his last public appearances. He was already 92 at the time and quite frail. Three years later he was dead. The youthful optimism that our country could transform itself into a leader among nations died with him.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you about Madiba Magic.

We were watching the World Cup Final in the same pub where Sausage Guy had met his match. I was there with Pauline, Dave, and others who lived in our commune. We were dressed up in the colours of our teams. Dave and I were wearing yellow and red to support the Spanish. The others donned the orange and blue of the Dutch flag.

The finale was prefaced by some Madiba magic. As Mandela arrived at Soccer City in Johannesburg and waved to the spectators, the crowds of patrons in the pub, to a man, rose to greet our struggle hero and man of peace. The spectators blasted their vuvuzelas and the applause roared across the stadium and onto all the television screens of the world. We felt that magic of possibility in the pub. Never mind soccer, this was our champion: the man who conquered a regime and his own demons, the man who started out as an armed fighter and became a peacemaker. He was the quintessential symbol of the resilience and transformation of the human spirit.

The bar was filled to capacity and the audience cheered when Madiba appeared. And then an almost religious hush came over the pub. For the next 120 minutes, only cheers and groans could be heard until Spain finally delivered the winning goal.

The pub exploded into cheering when Spain finally brought home the prize. The supporters embraced each other. Team colours and nationality no longer mattered. We all recognized that something was happening at a far deeper, more spiritual level. Although we came from different walks of life and cultures, we were united by a common love – the beautiful game.

Sport has this magical quality of uniting people. Madiba knew that. That is why he rallied a divided nation behind the Springboks at the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Similarly, after the political turmoil of the opening years of the Zuma presidency (which would continue for the next decade), South Africans thirsted for the magic of unity as an antidote to the fear, anger, hatred and distrust that had set in.

For a moment, we were reminded that there is more that unites us than the things that divide us. We were able to holds our heads up high before the concert of nations and proudly proclaim that we had delivered a magical spectacle for the greatest show on earth.

But it was also more than that. It was a reminder that we can do better. The K’naan anthem of that World Cup “Wave your flag” encapsulated so much of what we desperately needed to remind ourselves:

When I get older I will be stronger

They’ll call me freedom just like a wavin’ flag

We were very young then. Democratic South Africa was only 16 years old. She was a child living in the euphoria of her newfound freedom. Everything was possible. Everything was achievable. Filled with the elixir of Madiba magic, we believed that everything would be alright in the end.

But the magic died. We did not live up to our youthful expectations. We failed to make our dreams come to life. “Hope springs eternal in every human breast,” wrote Alexander Pope. We have learnt the hard way that, unless nurtured, hope can wither.

Hope will die if it is fed on corruption, lies, dishonesty, lack of education, crippling poverty, poor health care, and the absence of prospects for the future. That is what the Zuma years did to us.

It took nine years for his party to finally oust him. Cyril Ramaphosa took his place but the long shadow of the Zuma years continues to threaten to reignite the cauldron of despair. When Ramaphosa took office, there was talk of a new dawn.

It has been slow in rising. What can one man do in the face of a deadly virus and a crippled economy? We are older now. We are wiser and more pessimistic. We know better than to believe in magic.

And yet… every time I hear our national anthem, I am moved, and the final verse stirs up something deep inside:

Sounds the call to come together,

And united we shall stand,

Let us live and strive for freedom,

In South Africa our land.

 

Maybe some of that Madiba Magic will live on forever.

[1] Traditional horn-like instrument characteristic at soccer games.

[2] South African sporting anthem.

[3] Spirit.

[4] Street vendors.

[5] Term of affection for Nelson Mandela.

[6] A derogatory term for black foreigners coming from other African countries.

[7] Party.

[8] Thick porridge made of maize meal accompanied by a typical barbecued sausage.

[9] Soggy French fries.

[10] Tripe stew.

[11] Hangover.