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."