It’s known as the Rainbow Nation, the land that gave us our ‘Mahatma’ and the soil where his illustrious follower Nelson ‘Madiba’ Mandela tread his path into eternal greatness!
Having lived here for almost 4 years now, one can’t help but develop a certain fondness to this beautiful nation full of the warm and friendly people.
Apart from hip-hopping to the rhythm of the music at the drop of a hat, people here completely freak out on Soccer!
The Springbok (SA National Rugby team) has performed really well over the years and is the defending World Champion.
But when it comes to favourite sport amongst the masses, soccer wins hands down.
It would be a clichéd understatement if I say the common populace eat, drink and live soccer here.
The poor and the under privileged, disregarding their meager incomes are waiting with bated breath for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to savor the cherished moments and probably recount the amazing stories to their future generations.
Bafana Bafana (Meaning ‘Boys-Boys’-Name of the SA Soccer team; amusingly, the ladies soccer team is known as Banyana Banyana-Girls-Girls!!) national team isn’t exactly worthy enough to lay your bet on. The joke going around is that the supporter’s atleast hope that their team reaches the second round so that they could show off their expensive SA soccer jerseys for a few more days in the tournament!
Interestingly, the fact report says, in the history of Soccer WC, there hasn’t been an instance of a host country getting knocked out in the first round.
People over here are hoping against hope that this interesting and reassuring fact remains intact for this WC.
The next favourites amongst the general public is Ivory Coast (Didier Drogba is a major draw), Brazil (they are loved all over the world), Argentina (thanks to the everlasting popularity of Maradona who also happens to be my all time favourite and can’t wait to shake hands with the ‘Hand of God’!) & Italy (influential community here. I was under impression that only India has influential Italians!)
Some of the local folks here enquire about the soccer scene back home in India.
Embarrassingly the standard of soccer in India can be gauged from the fact that our supposed ‘God’s gift to Indian football’ and arguably the number one present day soccer player-Baichung Bhutia was contracted by F.C. Bury in a 3rd division Premier league (English Premier league is first division) and got to touch the ball not more than 4-5 times in the tournament as he was always ‘rested’ on the sidelines!
Cut to the 2010 WC buildup in SA-
The infrastructure has always been world class here and the authorities have taken good care, for it to remain so.
Flags of the participating countries have been put across all over the country. The stunning view of South African flags proudly flying against the wind is a common sight on most of the vehicles passing by and in a show of strength and support to the national team, people wearing the Yellow/Green Bafana Bafana jerseys is a very familiar scene cutting across all residents including the expat population….yours truly included! I‘ve got the Brazil jersey (‘Kaka’ written at the back) as well…just in case if SA crashes out in the 1st round itself!!!
In office, no conversation or meeting ends without gloating about the big match tickets that one possesses or discussing about the likely winners.
People religiously practice the Diski dance (that’s the dance theme for this world cup) in office. There are footballs, flags of all countries, vuvuzela’s (look wise it’s a shorter version of our good old shehnai popularized by the great Ustad Bismillah Khan) placed all around including the desks.
Just to make sure that employees do not clandestinely wander across the street to have a glimpse of the matches (like folks do back home in India, when a cricket match is on!), most of the companies have installed huge TV’s in their premises.
Some of the organization’s have asked their employees to take it easy for a month or work from home during the World Cup, resigning to the fact that very few would actually work in office.
Hope everything goes as per plan and the WC becomes a big success and South Africa reaps huge benefits from it.
Oogy Wawa!!! (‘Cheers’ in Zulu)
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