Archives for June 2010

I watched last night's Spain-Portugal match at a crowded bar in Yeoville, a cosmopolitan but dilapidated neighbourhood on the ridge overlooking Johannesburg's city centre. The beers were passed through a heavy security grille. The cheers and jeers came in French, Shona, and a dozen other languages, from a mixed crowd of Congolese, Zimbabweans, Ghanaians, and many others.

Yeoville was once the trendy, bustling "Notting Hill" of Joburg but an influx of poor immigrants from across Africa has changed it dramatically over the past decade. Rightly or wrongly, it is now branded with an ugly reputation for muggings, Nigerian gangsters, and urban decay.

"You would not believe what this place was once like," said a South African friend, Ezra, regretfully, as we walked in the dark down Rockey Road towards the bars and restaurants at Times Square.

But last night Yeoville seemed to be in the grip of something quite special - a mood of pan-African unity fostered by the World Cup and now hitched to the fortunes of Ghana, the last African team in the tournament. "For once in Africa we have everyone united from Cape Town to Cairo," said Junior Yele from the Democratic Republic of Congo. "It's fantastic. We are all behind Ghana." I asked him about the growing speculation that there could be another wave of xenophobic attacks in South Africa after the tournament.

"We're not scared," he said. "At this point everyone is united and we hope things stay that way. We think it's just a couple of people trying to scare people." There were nods from the crowd around us.

On the kerb outside a stall offering cheap phone calls to the rest of the continent, I ran into Willy Kalala, a Congolese immigrant and sharply dressed property entrepreneur. Two of his brothers had flown in - one from London, one from Kinshasa - for a family funeral. They had all bought tickets for the Ghana match. "We're always talking about Europeans," he said. "But we want something to change in Africa. We're encouraging black empowerment." He said the impact of the World Cup went far beyond football. "It will affect every domain, including the economy."

So a lot of African hopes are hanging on Friday's match - and the real possibility that Ghana could go further than any other team in this continent's history. There's talk of an open-top bus tour around Yeoville on Thursday by South African and Ghanaian fans. But I don't think that defeat would sour the mood too much. Six African teams qualified for the finals. Some played well, some did not, and some were just unlucky. That's football. On and off the pitch, Africa has plenty of reasons to feel proud, and united. Let's hope it lasts.

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I've just driven down to Bloemfontein with the author of this article
looking at the next sporting hurdle for South Africa. A few weeks ago I'm sure a lot of people would have said "no chance" but surely not any more.

The four-hour trip from Johannesburg seemed like one long procession of hooting England fans. Last week the half-way petrol stop was packed with South Africans and their blaring vuvuzelas, heading for the show-down against France. This morning was a lot quieter, as German and English fans lined their stomachs with eggs and sausages at the garage café.

Incidentally, President Zuma said South Africa would never be the same after the World Cup. Togo's striker Emmanuel Adebayor said much the same about the continent as a whole. As we head into the final stages of the tournament, I'm keen to hear from South Africans who have concrete experience of that. Has the World Cup changed your life?

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Nelson Mandela will not be attending any matches during the World Cup, according to his grandson Chief Mandla Mandela.

The 91-year-old former president is still in mourning for his 13-year-old great-granddaughter, Zenani, who was killed in a car accident on the eve of the World Cup tournament on 10 June.

"It's likely to be three months of mourning," said Mandla Mandela - a tall, imposing man whose gravel voice carries more than an echo of his grandfather.

"It depends on Zenani's mother, but we are having a family ritual on Sunday to fix the time. We are also cautious about [Mandela's] health - we wouldn't want to expose him to the winter cold. The family must play a protective role."

Thirty-six year old Mandla - also known as Chief Zwelivelile - is an MP from the ruling ANC and succeeded his grandfather as chief of the traditional council in Mvezo, the poor rural village where Nelson Mandela was born. Critics have accused him of seeking to exploit his grandfather's name.

Mr Mandela was in Port Elizabeth for last night's England-Slovenia match, for which 22 children from Mvezo were chosen to accompany the players onto the pitch.

He was also promoting an exhibition of World Cup-themed paintings, each signed by Nelson Mandela, which he is hoping to auction in order to raise funds for development projects in Mvezo. He is travelling to Paris next week with the same exhibition.

He told me of his grandfather's regret that he could not attend the World Cup opening ceremony as planned, but said he'd promised to be at the tournament "in spirit." The former president played a key role in securing the World Cup for South Africa.

His grandson said the focus "has always been about hosting, not playing" in the tournament, and he praised the impact it had already had on the country, and on its reputation abroad.

"People have come to discover a softer Africa," he said, then pointed to a South African flag flying upside down in the hotel lobby. "Something has changed here. We are becoming more patriotic. People finally want to be identified with the national flag, and they now understand how it should hang - that's the wrong side up. My grandfather was forever utilising sport for nation-building and this World Cup will forever be remembered as the moment we all rallied around the team."

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I'm writing this on the road to Bloemfontein ahead of this afternoon's duel between France and South Africa. A pale blue sky is shimmering over the endless, parched, spectacular, yellow fields of the Highveldt.

A few minutes ago we stopped for petrol in a small town called Ventersburg. A silver Rolls Royce pulled up next to us and the driver, decked out in a Bafana Bafana - the national team - shirt and chatting on his mobile, gave me a grin and a thumbs up. The service station was full of South African football fans, honking their vuvuzelas, adjusting their yellow and green wigs, and racing to get back on the road south.

"We're playing for pride," said one man, emerging from the cafe. "We never expected to get to the last 16 - we know this is the end for our team. We just want to go out on a high note."

He and his friends agreed that South African fans would now transfer their support to "any other African team that survives - maybe Ghana, or even Nigeria." And if they all drop out? "Then Brazil - half the team comes from Africa anyway."

Two unshaven Frenchmen stepped down from a coach. "What can you expect from a bunch of spoiled, childish, overpaid fools," said one of them, referring to the tensions within the French national team. France has "no chance" of staying in the tournament, they agreed. Today's match was about "l'honneur."

It will be interesting to see how South Africa adjusts from its role as World Cup participant and host, to just host. Will the atmosphere cool and the focus shift away from the tournament? A little, no doubt.

But my sense is that the pride that has enveloped this country over the past fortnight has never really been tied that closely to the fate or performance of Bafana Bafana. This is about South Africa reminding itself, and the rest of the world, what a remarkable country it still is - that the rainbow nation is still capable of miracles.

Last night I went with my family to see Spain run rings around Honduras at Ellis Park. The atmosphere, the football, the organisation, the security - were all fantastic, but for me the best moment came after the match, as we sat on the top deck of a double-decker bus, racing through the dark streets towards the park-and-ride.

The centre of Johannesburg can be a forbidding, dangerous place, especially at night. But from the top deck, with the bright lights of office blocks and cheap hotels all around us, the Hillbrow tower and its floodlit football looming overhead, and the police waving us through every junction, it suddenly felt almost magical.

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"I hear they cause a lot of trouble in the stadiums," said Seth, the owner of a ramshackle bar on the main road in the sleepy village of Phokeng.

He'd stocked up his fridges with beer, but wasn't quite sure what to expect from the hordes of England fans about to arrive.

He needn't have worried. Last night Phokeng turned into a cheering, dancing, vuvuzela-blaring example of the power of football - and, let's not forget, beer - to bring people together.

And it wasn't just the locals who had some preconceptions overturned as the sun set.

The temperature dipped, and the giant floodlights at the stadium cast a white glow over a now raucous village, its dirt roads clogged with beeping cars, cheering fans and grinning Fifa volunteers.

"We stayed at Sun City," said a couple from Leeds, sitting at another bar. "We were worried about the crime. But now we just wish we'd come and stayed here."

Nearby four swaying Englishmen clasping vuvuzelas spoke of feeling "intimidated" by the thought of visiting the country, but were now "swapping shirts" and getting their photos taken with almost everyone they bumped into.

Earlier, I myself had bumped into a lamppost - sober, I assure you - and was quickly surrounded by policemen who've clearly been well briefed about the need to reassure foreigners.

They wanted to know if I'd been mugged, or needed escorting anywhere. I hadn't and didn't, but they, and all the officials I've come across so far during the tournament, could not have been more charming.

As in Soweto on Friday, we ended up knocking on someone's door and asking if we could charge our satellite and computer equipment from their kitchen power socket.

Five men were sitting in the yard drinking home-brew and waiting to watch the game on television.

We sat in our van beside them editing this television report before joining the crowds streaming towards the stadium.

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It's a bright, crisp winter morning here in Johannesburg and I'm heading off to Rustenburg for England's first game tonight, my ears still not-unpleasantly numb with the echoes of yesterday's non-stop chorus of vuvuzelas.

What a day that was - whatever follows now and whatever criticisms start clinging to the tournament, Friday was one for the history books. I spent the whole day in Soweto and I can't remember witnessing such a sustained display of pure joy. I hope we managed to convey something of the mood in this television report.

Thanks to Mama Dzedze from Thokoza - a place of enduring poverty, energy, new wealth and liberation history - who let us film in her living room, fed us tea and cake, and then let us re-charge our satellite equipment in her kitchen. "I wasn't much of a football fan," she said. "But I am now." I will never forget the delirious roar that swept from her sofa, and out across the narrow, crowded streets of her neighbourhood when South Africa scored that first goal.

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I've been driving round Soweto this morning. The township is draped in flags and filled with the rowdy, joyful blare of vuvuzelas and car horns. News of the death of Nelson Mandela's great-granddaughter seems to have reached most people, but has not obviously dampened the mood.

However last night's car crash, and the earlier traffic incident involving British students, is a grim reminder that the biggest threat facing fans - local and foreign - over the next few weeks is not crime, but South Africa's appallingly dangerous roads.

I wrote about this - albeit in a light-hearted manner - a few weeks back.

You've probably heard the grim statistic of 50 murders a day in this country. But many of those incidents are domestic, and are concentrated in the more deprived areas where foreign fans are unlikely to visit.

Here's an even more chilling statistic - 42 people are killed every day on South Africa's roads. Each year there are 980,00 accidents.

So, please watch out for big, badly-driven trucks, people undertaking, drunk drivers, unlit roads, poorly-signed road works, potholes, four-way stops, roundabouts, broken traffic lights, aggressive minibus drivers, broken-down cars on busy highways, kids playing in the road....

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First - a prediction. This is going to be the friendliest World Cup anyone can remember. The atmosphere here - subdued for so long - has suddenly exploded into the deafening, exuberant fever of a township party.

There will also be some typically African chaos - transport going wrong, things starting late, VIPs stuck in traffic. But nothing major.

This is a milestone for the country - proof that the rainbow nation is still capable of miracles. It will help to change the way people see the whole continent - not dramatically perhaps. But it is an important reminder of how much is going right here, as well as wrong.

Will the tournament transform South Africa?
The pessimists will point to places like Nelspruit - a town now saddled with a giant, pointless, expensive stadium, surrounded by people who still have no jobs or decent education. Four weeks of football, and a few celebrity campaigns are not going to solve this country's daunting problems.

But the realists will argue that the World Cup was never meant to fix South Africa. Its role is more catalytic - it's forced people to do necessary things - like upgrading airports and fixing roads - years faster than they would otherwise have done.

Just as important - but far harder to measure - is the way these next few weeks will bring people and races closer together. I've seen it happening already.
Maybe it's just papering over the cracks... the power of football is easy to exaggerate. A post-tournament hangover is a real worry.

But right now, this fractious nation is proud, confident and more united that it's been for years.

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What percentage of male football fans coming to South Africa are going to pay for sex? Any answer can only be a fairly wild guess, I suppose. But earlier this year I had a very frank conversation with a couple of members of the "Barmy Army," the famously excitable group that follows the England cricket team around the world and had just been touring South Africa. "I would honestly say 90% - I was shocked," was the candid answer I was given by one individual who didn't want to be named.

Ninety percent may, of course, be an exaggeration - or a phenomenon peculiar to cricket fans - but it does suggest that a fair number of visitors will get involved over the next few weeks in South Africa's sometimes murky sex industry.

"Don't" is the simple message from Britain's foreign office.

The FCO's consular boss, Julian Braithwaite urged England fans "to think long and hard before they engage in any sexual contact in this country. We can't get you out of jail for free." He told me his biggest concern, besides breaking the law in a country where prostitution remains illegal, was HIV and Aids.

There are no definitive statistics, but researchers have estimated that between 40 and 50% of sex workers may be HIV-positive. "It's a real health risk," said Mr Braithwaite.

But will that stop people? "I know the English and Germans are very randy," said Marvin Resant with a grin. He's the owner of several entertainment clubs in Johannesburg including "Maxime's" - a huge sports bar complex with a hotel on top of it, not far from the Ellis Park stadium. By early evening, last week, the lobby was packed with women. "As long as the fans go to the right places, like this place, where there is security, they'll be fine," said Mr Resant, but he expressed concern about the possibility of police raids. "The police always crack down. It will be very embarrassing if they do it during the World Cup. They should treat it with a lot of sensitivity." His advice for fans: "Condomise, and have fun."

A few blocks away, in a seedy hotel room above another bar, a 24-year-old prostitute called Busi was getting ready for a night on the streets. "I'm imagining lots of... different men, Italians, Romeo [sic], Spanish, Ghana..." she said. Busi is hoping to triple her daily earnings during the tournament and then, hopefully, get out of the business. "At times I feel scared. I drink and smoke just to have the courage to face what's happening." Busi is worried about Aids, but far more concerned about the rising competition from Zimbabwean women who are undercutting local prostitutes on the streets, and about the harassment, intimidation and occasional rapes carried out by South African police officers.

"I was raped by two police," said another prostitute I spoke to in Diepsloot, a notoriously violent township outside Johannesburg and an area that foreign fans are not likely to visit. The woman, and two colleagues, described their lives as being trapped between the gangsters who rob their clients, and the police who extort money from them. "You can die at any moment. We are just risking our lives," said an articulate Zimbabwean woman, who told me she hopes to become an actor and novelist.

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Ndaye Mulamba hardly stands out in a crowd. He's a shuffling, stern, 60-year-old Congolese refugee, who struggles to speak English, and who passes unnoticed through the impoverished, crime-ridden townships that surround Cape Town.

But "Volvo" Ndaye is one of Africa's football legends, a dazzling striker who helped Zaire to qualify for the World Cup back in 1974, and who still holds the record for scoring most goals in a single African Cup of Nations tournament - scoring nine times in 1974.

Things started to go wrong for Ndaye in the mid-1990s, as Zaire descended into chaos and war. Eventually it would change its name to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Soldiers, who suspected the football hero might have cash to spare, shot him in the leg. The bullets are still there. Eventually Ndaye said he had to flee the country for his life, and ended up in Johannesburg, then Cape Town "with nothing".
"I had no family, and no money. All I could think about was where to get food. I felt abandoned [by the footballing community]," he said.

I spent the day with Ndaye last week and heard how he'd been rescued from the street by a South African family, how he'd started to coach local amateur football teams, and how he'd finally met and married a local woman. "It's like a circle," he said in French, searching for the right phrase to explain his long, tortuous journey. "But now I'm happy the World Cup has finally come to Africa."

Fifa seems to have taken Ndaye under its wing, but he told me he still doesn't have tickets for any of the matches in Cape Town, and plans to watch "on television instead, like everyone else". Although the DR Congo is also supportive, the country's football federation is apparently less keen to help Ndaye. "There are problems there," Ndaye said with a grunt.

We spoke about the 1974 World Cup. "I cry when I think about those days," he said. But he also talked about the circumstances of Zaire's notorious 9-0 defeat at the hands of Yugoslavia. He said prior to the match each member of the team had been promised $45,000 but that an official with the Zairean team had taken the money and left Germany. As a result, Ndaye said, "We decided not to play." Hence the result. When I suggested that might seem rather unpatriotic to some, he shrugged and said: "Of course it is about money."

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I have never seen so many smiles in Zimbabwe. From the lady at immigration to the minibuses packed with cheering football fans to the normally grim-faced intelligence officials guarding President Robert Mugabe as he strolled into the packed national sports stadium here in Harare on a sunny afternoon and greeted the visiting Brazilian team.

During the warm-up, Kaka waved to the crowd and was answered with a deafening roar from about 60,000 happy Zimbabweans who had each paid $10 for an experience for which almost everyone I've spoken to has described as a "dream" or a "once-in-a-lifetime" moment.

The World Cup may not have started yet, but you wouldn't know it from the giddy excitement here. After years of economic and political chaos very few Zimbabweans have the money to head across the border and experience the tournament kicking off in neighbouring South Africa next week. "This match is our World Cup" is something many people have told me today.

I'm writing this now on the touchline deafened by the roar of vuvuzelas with Zimbabwe's Warriors starting to flag after a very impress start. There's a man in a giant green and white eagle costume beside me, a slightly dysfunctional Mexican wave wandering around the stands, lots of adverts for the giant mining company Zimplats which is sponsoring the event, dozens of Brazilian journalists and a military brass band warming up for another performance.

It feels - at least today - like a refreshingly normal, happy country.

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Tumi Mkhuma is showing me her photo album in the small room she rents in a tough neighbourhood on the eastern outskirts of Johannesburg. "That's me when I was 11 - wearing trousers of course," she says. "I knew I was gay even as a young child."

Tumi has only had sex with a man once. That was last year, when she was dragged from a bar, beaten unconscious, and then raped. "A month later I got morning sickness - that's how I found out he raped me," she says.

To be poor, and black, and a lesbian in South Africa is to live in danger. "Corrective rapes", beatings and murders are disturbingly common in conservative communities where homophobia remains deeply entrenched.

Last week I was shown the ditch where the body of Eudy Simelane was thrown. She was South Africa's most high-profile victim - an openly gay, former star of the national women's football team. Her friend, MJ, said Eudy had been raped, tortured and stabbed in 2008. "Homophobia is rising, really rising," she said. "I've been through a lot in this community. I even have wounds in my body from being attacked for being lesbian."

"Chosen Few... Chosen Few... Chosen Few." A dozen women are shouting out the name of their football team on a scrap of wasteland just north of Johannesburg's city centre. Tumi is leading the chant. She's now the striker and obvious star of South Africa's only openly lesbian team.

"We're all lesbians so I feel like I'm with my family. They always put a smile on my face," says Tumi, breaking off from a twice-weekly practice session. "In township teams lesbians are not allowed." We talk about the World Cup. The women have mixed feelings - happy it's coming to South Africa, frustrated that they can't afford tickets, and angry that women's football is not given the same high profile.

After two energetic hours, Tumi takes off her boots and sets off for home. "I always worry. When I'm walking the streets I watch left and right. I'm not just a woman, I'm also lesbian, and there is no justice here."

The man she says assaulted her is still living in the neighbourhood, and although she's reported him to the police, they have yet to arrest him. "The police don't take it seriously," she says. "He's threatened me again and says he knows where I live. I don't have any protection. I don't have weapon. I don't have anything. I'm just me. Just me."

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