/ 17 June 2011

Playing footie with our hearts and minds

Playing Footie With Our Hearts And Minds

The picture doesn’t show which jersey number President Jacob Zuma is wearing, but it’s fair to assume it’s the number 10, the jersey normally worn by the leader of the team.

Zuma, thigh strapped in bandages, is right at the centre of the action. He is surrounded by several players, male and female, none of whom looks like they are about to nick the ball, or, worse, tackle him.

Zuma should consider himself lucky, Bolivian president Evo Morales would probably say.

Last year the Bolivian leader’s team, staffed by his aides, was playing against a team that had many of his political rivals. A player from the rival team roughly made contact with Morales, felling him and causing injury. An enraged Morales rose, walked up to his assailant and kneed him in the groin, described in the Bolivian press as the “testicular zone”.

But there was never any likelihood of Zuma kneeing someone, in the groin or anywhere else, as his knee was quite patched up.

The image was shot at the Special Olympics Unity Cup held in Cape Town during the 2010 Fifa World Cup, just before the quarter-final game between Argentina and Germany.

Zuma’s team included accomplished players such as ex-Leeds captain Lucas Radebe and ex-Newcastle captain Alan Shearer. The match was meant to raise awareness about people who have learning and other mental disabilities.

A year later, the Fifa World Cup seems like it was hosted decades ago. The football itself was largely forgettable and that dire final between Spain and the Netherlands seemed like an appropriate culmination to the ugly, conservative game on display. The karate style, studs-up challenge on Spaniard Xabi Alonso by Dutchman Nigel de Jong is what most will remember about the final. Decades later, many Africans will remember it not for the football, but because it was hosted on this continent.

We witnessed a spontaneous outburst of passion: cars draped in South Africa’s colours, stranger hugging stranger to celebrate Siphiwe Tshabalala’s goal against Mexico and the interminable hum of the vuvuzela. Ah, the vuvuzela, that most South African of contrivances!

Its stamp on the cup was captured by Khaya Dlanga, the don of South Africa’s social media scene, when he quipped that the sound of the vuvuzela is the only thing that can be heard from space”.

It wasn’t all noise, to be sure, there was heartbreak, too. Ghana’s eventual quarterfinal loss to Uruguay was particularly painful. It wasn’t just Ghana’s loss, it was Africa’s loss, keenly felt by most South Africans.