The South African team shrugged off all the adversity during their visit to Brazzaville last week … untill the second half of the match when they finally succumbed to Congo fever
SOCCER:Julian Drew
IT’S only eight o’clock on Sunday morning at the central market in the Patrice Lumumba district of Pointe Noire but already there is an excited buzz among the crowds of people milling through the narrow aisles. A dancing throng follows a troubador playing a wooden pipe and selling tin rattles.
As he passes by the crowds sway to his rhythm which spreads like a wave in every direction. Men, women and children join in the eulogies to the Red Devils, Congo’s national soccer team who will face South Africa’s Bafana Bafana later in the afternoon in a decisive top-of- the-table clash in group three of the African World Cup qualifiers. Everybody seems to be stocking up with food and drink and heading for the stadium. By 11 o’clock, four-and-a-half hours before kick-off, the ground is filled to capacity and the gates are locked.
To the medical fraternity Congo fever may be one of the most deadly diseases known to mankind but the fever which gripped Pointe Noire last week seemed equally virulent. It had been evident from the moment Bafana Bafana touched down at the Agostinho Neto airport on Friday afternoon to be greeted by a swarm of half crazed locals whose only words were an incessant tirade of deux, deux, accompanied by V-signs.
To the supremely confident South Africans the suggestion of a 2-0 scoreline in favour of the home side seemed hopelessly optimistic. But everywhere the team went in Pointe Noire the words deux, deux echoed in their ears.
The general sense of delirium wasn’t confined to the man in the street, though. Everything seemed to be possessed. The meticulous arrangements made months in advance by the South African Football Association (Safa) quickly unravelled. Confirmed hotel bookings were anything but firm and Bafana Bafana had to move to another hotel. The media too were out of luck and slept on mattresses on the floor of an office at another hotel.
Friday afternoon’s training session at the city’s Franco Anselmi stadium had to be transferred to the hotel grounds after the team bus rolled to a halt in what appeared to be the municipal rubbish dump and Clive Barker refused to even get out to examine the pitch. A group of locals scoffed derisively as the media held their noses and strolled around the grounds. “Pele and Brazil trained here so why can’t Bafana Bafana?” they inquired with contempt. “When was that?” “1959,” came the reply.
Clearly Monsieur Anselmi’s little oasis has been on a steady 38-year decline since then. Back at the Palm Beach Hotel there is an air of professionalism about the squad as they go through their paces on the grassy lawns. “Jeff the Chef” comes out to inform the team that supper is ready. He is Southern Sun’s group chef who has been loaned to Safa to prepare the food which has been flown to Pointe Noire with the team. Nothing has been left to chance for this game which has been organised like a military invasion.
On Saturday morning the players go for a stroll around the central market. They are unruffled by the ubiquitous taunts of deux, deux but fail to find the section where snakes, crocodiles, monkeys and seemingly everything else that runs, flys, swims or crawls in the Congo is up for sale. Just as well. If anything could have unnerved them it would have been this gruesome little corner straight out of “the heart of darkness”.
Conrad must surely have been thinking of a place like this when he wrote of “the fascination of the abomination”.
In the afternoon the team went to the infamous Municipal stadium to see if the “mealie field” where they would play the match is really as bad as has been reported. Under International Football Federation (Fifa) rules the visiting side must be allowed to train on the match pitch within 24 hours of the game.
But as coach Clive Barker and Safa vice- president Danny Jordaan led the players down the tunnel they were met by belligerent soldiers waving AK47s.
There were no Congolese officials to be found and an argument ensued as the team tried to gain access to the field. Then the “fever” struck again as a disturbed looking soldier with filed down teeth and a manic half-grin cocked his weapon in Jordaan’s face and threatened to shoot him. Jordaan stared him down and invited him to shoot, and after what seemed an eternity one of the other soldiers stepped in to cool him down.
Even this “Mad Max” episode didn’t seem to unsettle the players and as a diplomatic row raged on the sidelines they calmly went about their business on the field looking every bit like the African champions.
An hour-and-a-half before the game on Sunday the players came out of their hotel to board the bus for the stadium and the 40-strong group of supporters who accompanied the team turned into a choir of a thousand voices. The elite Congolese soldiers assigned to escort the team looked on in awe as Shosholoza reverberated around them and Bafana Bafana marched to the bus, chests forward, heads held high and the smell of victory in their nostrils.
More psychological warfare awaited at the stadium as Bafana Bafana had to wait outside for 20 minutes before being allowed into their change room.
Inside the ground the juju men strutted around and drums pounded unrelentingly. Congo’s President Lissouba arrived to watch his Red Devils for the first time and then the South African charter jet named appropriately, Bafana Bafana, roared overhead as the teams lined up for the national anthems.
Congolese soldiers harassed the SABC crew interviewing Jordaan before the match but all the intimidatory tactics in the book appear to have had no effect on Neil Tovey and his men.
Half-time arrives and Bafana Bafana have played the more composed football and are more than holding their own. During the interval a limping, dancing mascot ambles onto the field with “fever” in his eyes. He fools around with a ball and twice he finds the empty net to the roar of the crowd.
Warming up with the other substitutes is Macchembe Youngha-Mouhani, Congo’s only established international star who arrived from Germany just six hours before the game. When the second half begins Youngha is on the field and within 20 minutes he has ominously fulfilled the promises of deux, deux.
Like the Bafana Bafana regiments of old the South African team must prove itself in battle before they can truly become men of men. They showed they can play at home when they won the Nations Cup but it is in places like Congo and the World Cup in France where they must now perform if they are really to become a force to be reckoned with.
Despite soaking up all the intimidatory tactics meted out by the Congolese before the game, when the time came for the “washing of the spears” Bafana Bafana lacked fighting spirit. Congo played with greater resolve and deserved to win.
Although the journey to France is by no means over and South Africa still have everything to play for, another heartless display in three weeks’ time when Bafana Bafana play Zaire will certainly spell the end of the road.
Fortunately for Clive Barker and his team the game will not be staged in Kinshasa. The “Congo fever” experienced last weekend would be nothing compared to the madness of Zaire. That would be like letting a dose of full blown Ebola loose on “ibhola lethu”.