Church Square in Pretoria has seen some deadly serious encounters: one Friday lunch-hour in 1990 about 5 000 members of the newly-unbanned African National Congress confronted a police cordon.
But last Sunday was not one of those occasions, despite the fact that roughly the same number of angry people gathered on the square to protest against the decision to rename Pretoria Tshwane. Many sported veldskoene without socks. A number carried the Transvaal vierkleur — allowed as a heritage item — and the old orange, white and blue flag, banned as a provocation, along with paramilitary uniforms, firearms and hate speech.
The demonstration was organised by Pretoria Civic Action, which got Solidarity trade union, the Freedom Front and the Democratic Alliance under the same duvet. A giant screen had been erected in one corner for the Super 12 semifinal clash between the Bulls and the Waratahs.
In fact, there were two crowds on the square: the ”Pretoria stays Pretoria” crowd, which thinned down to about 1 500 hardened rugby fans, and inquisitive, mostly black, spectators who engaged the demonstrators with great passion and volume, but without rancour, and eventually turned to watching a troupe of child-tumblers busking for small change.
Every so often the rugby fans turned to applaud a Bulls advance on the big screen. But, as the match progressed in favour of the Australians, that enthusiasm also dwindled.
Afrikaans rock star Steve Hofmeyr warned the crowd that the media — about a dozen of us — was waiting for an incident to mar the event.
Not everything Hofmeyr says makes perfect sense. For example, ”Die Blou Bul eet nie van die grond af nie. [Blue Bulls don’t eat off the floor.]” Only he knows what he meant, but it sounded rugged and uncompromising, just like supporters of the Bulls and Pretoria like it.
In his short, extremely salty speech he, in essence, called everyone from the government to the executive mayor hypocrites for choosing to name a city they hadn’t built.
All the traditional ingredients for horror were there: rugby, dop, politiek (politics) and a touch of rassespanning (racial tension). But nothing happened. Perhaps we really are growing up.