I think I am on record somewhere or the other (probably in this very newspaper) as describing the national passion for soccer as witless and tasteless, or words to that effect.
This was probably in regard to the manner in which international soccer matches have been sucked into a sorry attempt to make winning or losing seem like part
of a discourse on nationalism — “we are better than them”, kind of thing. And I was talking, on the one hand, about South Africa’s bad grace at not winning the bid to host the World Cup in 2006, in the first instance, and its national team’s poor showing at the African Cup of Nations earlier this year in the second. After the latter fans and pundits alike, presuming our automatic right to supremacy, blamed our failure on bad coaching from a foreigner from Portugal, who happened to have been chosen to formulate a winning strategy from out of the blue, and failed to devise killer strategies against unlikely teams like Cameroon and Senegal in the destitute Republic of Mali. I was talking about soccer as African politics.
Well, I would still like to talk about soccer as politics, but from a different point of view. And I have no intention of eating my earlier words about how we as a nation choose to regard our performance in the game.
The current World Cup series is the first that has grabbed my attention from start to finish. I have found myself, in spite of myself, glued to the television set in various locations around Johannesburg as the drama has been played out. And the reason I have logged in to the action, for the first time in my life, is, I am afraid, pretty political.
This has, in the post 9-11 world, been a pretty politically loaded Word Cup.
The stakes are always high in this quadrennial event — advertising, merchandising, and the ra-ra of jingoism that gives the winning nation a certain cachet in the years that follow.
In the post-World War II years it was England’s rivalry with Germany that mattered. In the 1960s and 70s, Brazil’s sudden prominence, behind the legendary power and footwork of Pele, put the Third World agenda in perspective, and effectively proposed a new and unchallengeable relationship with the First World. The shantytown could kick your butt, was the theme. And so we cheered.
The 1980s and 1990s produced a New World Order where, if you will, all of this should have become history. Yes, we had Maradona and Argentina. But this all became part of a rapidly spiralling chaos of cocaine and corruption. The Third World was teetering on its feet, run as it might.
The 2002 World Cup has been something else. All commentators have called it an arena of upsets –the French champions of 1998 sent home without a single goal to their credit, for one. The unexpected rise of the United States, almost making it to the quarterfinals, against all odds, for another. (What are they doing here in our gentlemanly, Olde World game of soccer, anyway, one might ask?)
The most interesting thing for me has been observing this arena of upsets from Melville, Johannesburg.
Melville, as you know, is a polymorphous neighbourhood next door to, and contiguous with, Westdene, a formerly Afrikaans-speaking neighbourhood, where the local burgers finally persuaded the authorities of the day (somewhere in the 1950s) to remove neighbouring Sophiatown, that multiracial sprawl of humanity across the road, from out of their sight, and create the new, lily-white suburb of Triomf in its place.
Anyway, Melville is where the World Cup has been played out for me. The television sets that I have been glued to from time to time have not been in my sunny Sandton apartment, but in a couple of Melville restaurants (the food’s not bad, by the way) where Africa’s progress through this very politically loaded World Cup has been relentlessly pursued.
Melville during the World Cup is a sight to see. Restaurants like Spiro’s, Nuno’s, and Xai Xai have been the places to be as the mighty colonial powers have fallen, and the underdogs, from Korea to Senegal to Turkey, have risen to grab the imagination of the world.
Here, also, you see what transformation has begun to mean in South Africa.
Melville is still a very white, largely Afrikaans-speaking neighbourhood, you see, and the crowds gathered in its chic restaurants to watch the action have generally represented that profile.
But it has been quite a thing to see the entire packed audience rooting for the Third World, groaning as South Africa missed one opportunity after another in their match against Spain, leaping to their feet, arms raised in the air, only to deflate dejectedly back into their seats as Senegal scored, and then was disallowed, two goals in rapid succession against Turkey.
Turkey, of course, is also a Third World country. But the crowd’s loyalty was solidly with Africa in this instance. And the sentiments were genuine.
The emotion was equally genuine when Brazil clinched its victory against the same Turks a few days later. And clearly, Melville, like the rest of Africa, will be holding its breath for a Brazilian victory against Germany when the climactic match is finally played out on Sunday.
Brazil, representing Africa and its diaspora, is flying the flag for all of us. As the G8 countries pompously ponder the merits and demerits of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, Melville, Africa, prepares to cock a collective snook at imperialism. The world, from this angle, has certainly been turned on its head.
Archive: Previous columns by John Matshikiza