Greg's blog

I can't figure out whether South Africans are delusional or unbeatable. On Sunday night, Spain won the World Cup, right? Then why did The Star newspaper cover their front page the following day with the headline, "SA, Spain both champions." And another South African newspaper, the Sunday Times, wrote, "They came, they saw -- we conquered." Wait, who did South Africa conquer?

"We proved all the doomsayers wrong," said a caller to a radio show. "They said we couldn't pull it off," said a newspaper article. “For years, many South Africans have been told that they are inferior.”

In other words, South Africans felt they had beat the odds that outsiders had stacked against them. Before the start of the World Cup, doubts had been expressed overseas of whether the country could handle such a task. Crime would rise, stadiums wouldn't be ready, transportation wouldn't work, accommodation would run out.

And by the end of the event South Africans were boasting in letters to the editor that they had defeated "the detractors abroad who willed us to fail."

Advertisements popped up alongside the newspaper articles: "Take a bow, South Africa," said one from the Department of Sports and Recreation. And the cellphone company MTN took out an ad that read, "Together we have shown the world what we can do when we stand united."

I had noticed unity, relatively speaking. Around the soccer games there had been more of it than I had ever felt in the country. Just the fact that whites were attending soccer matches in any number was surprising. Soccer was the black sport. My friend Garth, a white South African, gushed with pride to his wife when we returned from a World Cup match, "It was great to see all the different people together, blacks, whites, Indians, tourists."

During the World Cup, South Africa felt happier, freer and more optimistic. A Zulu guy said to me, "The country has only been like this once before, in 1994 (when Mandela was elected)."  While the World Cup was having a positive impact, descriptions of that impact became exaggerated during the last week of the event. "Africa is the dark continent no longer," said a newspaper article. Descriptions of how South Africa as host was impacting the world also became exaggerated. "South Africa is now the darling of the planet," claimed a newspaper article.   That was amusing, but it didn't stop there. An ad by the state-owned telecommunications company, Telkom, stated: "We did it, flawlessly." Come on. You did it, yes, but flawlessly? There was a security guard strike and the police had to take over at Soccer City stadium. Hundreds of fans missed their semifinal match in Durban because the airport couldn't handle the amount of traffic. Japanese journalists were mugged. An American tourist was shot and robbed while walking to his accommodation on the very day he arrived in country. Yes, things mostly functioned, and crime was so much lighter than a normal month in South Africa, but flawlessly?

The final was played, and Spain beat the Netherlands, and it was all over, but the host's self-congratulations were only getting started. An ad from ABSA bank: "South Africa now has 6.6 billion fans." A headline: "Vuvuzela rules world." It grew too much for me. I was tired of hearing it, and I drove off to a game reserve near Johannesburg to get a break. I stared at a herd of wildebeests, I listened to them crunch grass as they grazed, and I recalled the opening day of the World Cup. When I was riding a bus back from the stadium that night some Mexicans and some South Africans were discussing the match which had just ended as well as different team's prospects. A young South African said, "The World Cup trophy has come to African soil and it must stay here. Even if another team wins, it doesn't matter, we will steal it from them as they get on the plane."

When Lerato told me that someone in Tsoeneng had a television where I could watch the semifinal between Germany and Spain I jumped at the chance. The idea of watching two European powers play World Cup soccer from an African village that had no electricity was irresistible.

I had experienced World Cup 2010 matches in a variety of places already. The opening match I spent surrounded by the 85,000 other lucky people in Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium. I watched Brazil lose to Holland from the stands of Port Elizabeth's cricket stadium, which had been set up with a giant screen down on the pitch. I listened to one Japan game on a Sesotho radio station while driving. I remember the announcer saying so many times two of the player's names as they passed each other the ball: Honda, Endo, Honda, Endo.

But watching a World Cup game in Tsoeneng, the village where I once lived, promised to be a very different viewing environment. I arrived at dusk and then it got dark, really dark. I was shocked by the blackness of the night that enveloped us. How quickly I had forgot what it is like to live where there is no electricity, especially during the weeks when there is no moon. I knew that there were a hundred village houses around me, but I no longer saw them; I couldn't even see my feet. Lerato lit the ground with his cellphone, and I followed closely behind as we walked up the hill to his neighbor's house, to the television.

In South Africa's Sunday Times newspaper the Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, said that the World Cup had created 130,000 jobs. I'm not sure if that figure includes new sex workers, but the influx of mostly male foreign tourists usually means increased demand for prostitutes.

Across the border in Lesotho, however, ladies of the night seem more desperate for work than usual. One crocodile, as they're locally nicknamed, pulled some hard marketing on me the other night when I passed her corner.

Even though I was driving my cheap KIA Picanto rental car, all three of the crocodiles began to hoot as I pulled up to the stop sign at the intersection of Kingsway and Pioneer roads in Maseru. Then the one ran up to my window. That there is a real hooker, I thought as she waved at me. And then, just as I looked down to notice that the door was unlocked, she opened it. She proceeded to sit down in the passenger seat, close the door and look ahead – ready to go.

It was only 7:30 in the evening, but Maseru is a ghost town after dark. And there were no other cars on the road at that moment.

I looked at the hooker and said, “No.”

She smiled at me and replied, “Yes.”

“No,” I said. “I don't want.”

She smiled. She looked about 20 years old, and she was wearing black jeans and a green jacket. It was cold enough to see your breath that night. There was a scar on her right cheek.

“Get out,” I said.

She said, “Talking?”

I don't know what that meant, but I pointed to the door and repeated slowly, “Get out.”

Her colleagues were looking in on us, assessing the negotiations and giggling. How am I going to get this hooker out of my car?

We both sat silent for a little while until a pair of headlights approached from behind and I said to her, “The police are coming! Watch out!” But she wasn't fooled. Or she hadn't understood what I said, because she only casually turned around, and then she turned back at me and smiled again.

But she at last acknowledged that I wasn't moving the car with her in it, and the car behind us was going to lose patience soon. She opened the door and got out. I drove away to the sound of three young women laughing in the night.

After spending so much time in cities in South Africa, obsessed with soaking up as much World Cup action as possible, it was a relief to drive back into the mountains of Lesotho. The jagged ridges of Qacha's Nek surrounded me like a buffer, as did the yellow fields of corn and sorghum which were half-harvested. But for the hum of my car, it was a quiet scene as I cruised around another bend, and then down in the fields I saw a circle of men: In unison, they raised knobkerries and smashed them down, they raised the knobkerries again, stamped their feet, and together they smashed them down. I stopped the car. What were they smashing?

I walked across the road, through part of a harvested sorghum field, and saw that they were standing on a tarp and threshing a pile of sorghum heads -- separating the small round grains from the stalk. Still in unison, they drew the wooden knobkerries high and brought them down. Smash.

They also sang. A couple women and a handful of girls stood nearby also watching the men, so I asked one of the girls what the men were singing about. “It's not clear,” she said. Men in Lesotho working in the fields or herding animals always sang, and they always sang like that: deeply and in mumbles so you couldn't understand the words.

They were in such a rhythm that they paid no attention to the foreigner now watching them. I stared at the pile of sorghum heads convulse under their knobkerrie blows, I looked at the faces of the men covered in masks and scarves, and I floated off into a zone where I recalled the pleasures of the simple rural life I had experienced in Tsoeneng, where you worked to create food, then you ate it, you worked to create more, and then you ate it. The cycle seemed like it would get monotonous, but it never had for me. I missed it, and I was happy to be surrounded by fields again.

I continued to strain to hear the words of their song. Finally, I asked the girl next to me again, “I think I hear them say: 'Ua e bona khosi ea Majeremane.'” She said that now she heard the same thing.

The men put down their knobkerries for a rest and one of them said to me, “You see how we thresh sorghum with the knobkerries?”

“Yes, and I like your song. Are the words: 'You see the king of the Germans'?”

He laughed. “That's right. Today we are supporting Germany, as they have a game against Spain.”

The nearest village was a mile or two away, and I doubted it even had electricity. “Where do you watch the soccer?”

“In the village down there, there is a TV.”

While I had watched their labor and fallen into nostalgia about the simple rural life of the Lesotho countryside, they had been singing in support of the Germans in the FIFA World Cup. This event knew no limits.

With multiple off days between games now, a World Cup traveler in South Africa could get restive. Luckily, I've been staying with friends (thanks Garth and Yvonne) in Jeffreys Bay, where out front there is a wave that is, well, decent.

 Ghana and Uruguay were tied 1-1 and in the last seconds of extra time when a Ghana player kicked the ball at the Uruguay goal. Luis Suarez of Uruguay, standing on the goal line, with nothing but the net behind him, then put both hands up and slapped the ball out of the air. He was not the goalkeeper, however, which made touching the ball with his hands on purpose a clear act of cheating. Luis Suarez cheated. The Ghana kick was a sure goal. And when the referee approached to issue a red card, Suarez was walking away, then he gave the ref a double take and dropped his jaw like, “What? Me?”

If Luis Suarez hadn't cheated, Ghana would have won. Africa would have won: The entire continent had taken the Black Stars as their own; they were the last African team left in the tournament. South Africans were particularly supporting the Ghanaians, referring to the team as Baghana Baghana. Nelson Mandela wrote a personal letter to the Black Stars to wish them well. Local companies took out full-page advertisements in newspapers to show their support, such as the one by Metropolitan financial services which showed a drawing of Africa and the message, "Together we can conquer the world. Good luck Ghana!"

But Luis Suarez struck again. Remember, this is the same guy who faked an injury against the South African goalkeeper during the group stage, getting the goalkeeper kicked out and breaking the spirit of the South Africans, basically ending their World Cup run.

On the radio today people called in and were very careful to avoid making real threats toward Suarez. One person said: “Shame on you. That's twice you've been responsible for knocking out African teams.” And another vaguely said: “Suarez should be punished.”

 The World Cup has felt like a juggernaut, an unceasing ball of games rolling downhill over the last three weeks. Everyday there has been so much soccer to watch and read and talk about. It all stopped on Wednesday, with two days respite before the start of the quarterfinals on Friday. And my life felt aimless.

I considered which quarterfinal match promises to be the most interesting. My conclusion is that if there's a battle to watch tomorrow, it's the one between Germany and Argentina. For these two powers seem close to equal at soccer play, and they also met in the quarterfinals at the 2006 World Cup, where Germany won and the teams fought on the field afterward. So there is emotion and revenge involved for Argentina.

Actually, a sort of revenge is involved for Germany as well. The most recent match between the countries was held in March of this year when they played in Munich. And Argentina won that one.

But according to the way he acted after the game, the score doesn't seem to feel settled for the coach of Argentina, Diego Maradona. At the post-match press conference, Maradona had to share the podium with the young German striker, Thomas Mueller, who had made his international debut in the match that day. Maradona, the legend, refused to stand beside such an unknown and stormed off. He would return to the podium only when the German had left.

Mueller is unknown no longer, that's for sure. So far in this World Cup he has made quite an impression, particularly in the minds of England, whom Germany played last week. In that game Mueller scored two goals in the second half.

The sight of Maradona huffing and puffing at another press conference would be priceless if Mueller has a part in sending Argentina home in the quarterfinals again in this World Cup.

 Nelson Mandela is very close to a god in South Africa. In other parts of the world he is a well-respected statesman, with honorary awards having been given to him by institutions from Harvard University on down, but in South Africa he is beyond a man. He is above reproach, omnipresent, and his wishes are command.

In a country where racial tensions still make the headlines almost daily, here is a black man whom white South Africans seem to universally speak highly of. I have heard whites say negative things about other leaders, both black and white, and both in personal conversation and on the radio and in newspapers. But not once have I heard a white say a single negative thing about Mandela.

He seems above race. He is simply the father of modern South Africa. As such, Mandela is everywhere one looks. His visage is found on the five rand coin. In bookstores these days, one finds three types of reading material prominently displayed at the entrances: South Africa country guides, World Cup books and Nelson Mandela books. In Cape Town, one can see a new opera called "African Songbook: A Tribute to the Life of Nelson Mandela." Mandela's name has taken over the country's sixth-largest city; what once was Port Elizabeth is now called Nelson Mandela Bay. And in every other city I've visited in South Africa I've seen at least one street named Mandela. Johannesburg, the country's heart, even has its Nelson Mandela Square, a ritzy shopping area centered around a giant statue of the man. The house where Mandela once lived in Johannesburg is now a museum.  ESPN's prime broadcasting site in Nelson Mandela Square.

It is hard to believe that someone so revered and honored is still alive. Usually the clouds of distant memory are required for such things. But Mandela is set to celebrate his 92nd birthday on July 18.

And it seemed it would be the culmination of his time on earth on June 11, when he was supposed to welcome in person the world's biggest sporting event to the country he struggled to bring to democracy and respect. Mandela is frail and rarely makes public appearances anymore, but in the weeks prior he had gone through medical checkups and was given the green light to attend the opening ceremonies and soccer match between Bafana Bafana and Mexico.

The crowd of 85,000 at Soccer City stadium was eager to see him. I was eager to try and spot him down on the field or up in a box in the stands or wherever he might appear. And when his absence was announced there was a collective and confused holding of breaths. Then a message from Mandela was relayed to us: Still, “the game must start and we should enjoy the game.” The crowd's vuvuzelas exploded in obeyance.

But it was all for Mandela, and none for the man who was actually speaking the words to the stadium and the world. For at that moment, Jacob Zuma, the current South African president, standing at a podium down on the field and in front of the cameras seemed to be only a mouthpiece for a higher figure, like a mere prophet relaying messages from above. And indeed, as instructed, we did all enjoy the game.