Continuing his series on the World Cup, South African sports fanatic Hilton Heydenrych takes a long hard look out of his back door at the madness and the mayhem of the upcoming football circus…

Steven Pienaar - A One-Man Team?

And what of the prospects of the national team, affectionately nicknamed Bafana, Bafana (The Boys, The Boys)?  Since readmission (to world sports) in 1991, there has been an eerily steady decline.

Despite missing out on World Cup qualification in 1994, Bafana entered the world stage in a blaze of glory, winning the African Cup of Nations in 1996. This was followed by a runner-up medal in 1998, 3rd place in 2000, a quarter-final exit in 2002, group elimination in 2004, group elimination without a goal in 2006, group elimination without a win in 2008, and non-qualification in 2010.  Their World Cup campaign has been beset by administrative blunders.  After leading the team to the African Nations triumph in 1996 and World Cup qualification in 1998, Clive Barker was unceremoniously dumped for unknown Frenchman Phillipe Troussier three months before the big event. No-one was surprised when the team was routed 3-0 by France in the opening game, and failed to make the second round, despite a face-saving draw against Denmark.  In 2002, lo and behold, the South African Football Association (Safa), made the same mistake, firing Carlos Queiroz only months before the Cup and installing local power-broker (and former football hero) Jomo Sono as coach.  Despite the official malaise, the young Bafana came heart-breakingly close to emerging from the group-phase, with a draw against Paraguay, a win over Slovenia and a rollicking 3-2 loss to Spain, resulting in a fewer-goals-scored tie-break exit. Despite the disappointment, everyone was bullish that this team of youngsters would be world-beaters by 2006. 

Instead, a further procession of mediocre coaching appointments led to non-qualification – and, if it weren’t for automatic qualification as hosts, the same fate would have befallen the current bunch.  The potential embarrassment of a host-team flop led to government intervention in 2006 and, to great fanfare (and the considerable outlay of cash), Carlos Alberto Perreira (mastermind of Brazil’s successful 1994 campaign) was appointed coach.

 Only a year later, however, the dream was in tatters as Perreira resigned (for “personal reasons” – apparently his wife’s illness, but who believed that?) and the hapless Joel Santaña took over, presiding over the AFCON non-qualification humiliation.  It seemed that (despite a temporary revival at the Confederations Cup) the decline would continue forever.

So, is there anything positive to report?

After the last run of defeats under Santaña, Safa could take it no more, and with much supplication (and, no doubt, an even larger cash offer) managed to persuade Perreira to return.  So he is back (fortunately more than six months before the commencement of World Cup action – as long a period of continuity as one can hope for with Safa).  And in this amazingly short time, partly through his persona, partly through a judicious choice of opposition – Brazilian club-sides, no-hopers (Thailand), formerly-respectable non-qualifiers (Bulgaria, Colombia) and bottom-tier qualifiers (Japan) – he has rekindled the hopes of a grateful nation.  And as the squad has been whittled down to 30 (with the final 23 to be announced today), new names – Bongani Khumalo, Siyabonga Sangweni, Thanduyise Khuboni – are discussed in increasingly excited tones as people dare to believe again.  Sure, everyone knows that the team’s chances depend heavily on the form of Steven Pienaar (recently crowned Everton player-of-the-year) but who can help squeezing their eyes tight shut and imagining some of that new talent glowing on the world stage.

And that mood is now being echoed in other spheres.  The stadiums are all finished; the airports look like they’ll be ready in time, including the brand, spanking new King Shaka International in KwaZulu-Natal – the first new international airport on the continent in decades (Global warming, what’s that?); shiny new buses have started plying their routes;  the Gautrain will commence a partial service on 8 June (three days before the start of the tournament – hold your breath); and fan-parks and fan-walk routes are taking shape at breathtaking speed.

King Shaka International Airport, Durban

Ticket-issue started in April and nothing makes folk feel warm inside, and dispels the doubts that this thing is really going to happen, like a batch of glossy over-sized tickets popping out the machine [Now I even know which seats I’m going to be sitting in – that lottery-winning message wasn’t a fake!].

In the first of a series on the World Cup, South African sports fanatic Hilton Heydenrych takes a long hard look out of his back door at the madness and the mayhem of the upcoming football circus…

When I first thought about describing the situation in South Africa during the build-up to the World Cup, my dominant response was that I could think of almost nothing positive to write about. Anger at FIFA’s broken promises, contempt for the fools who believed them, revulsion at the cost of the whole affair (in a recession-ridden, development context), embarrassment  at the prospect of incomplete preparations, despair at the dismal performances of the national team, fear of terrorism – it all just seemed pretty miserable.

At the root of many of these problems were the economic expectations created when South Africa won the bid in 2004.  Sure, people were excited about having the world’s greatest footballers come to town, but the overriding sentiment was that everyone was going to make a lot of money.  From real-estate developers to street vendors, all imagined hordes of naïve football tourists paying elevated prices for their products.  I’m not sure if this “economic boon” idea was created by the government or FIFA or the media, or if it was just collective greed running wild in the mind’s eye, but as the event has drawn closer, it has given rise to no end of bitterness and recrimination.

Vendors have been aghast and disappointed to find that, under FIFA’s strict merchandising rules, they will not be allowed to sell their self-made World Cup souvenirs, and nor will they be able to open a soft-drinks stand next to the stadium entrance.  And stories abound of guesthouses that have spent hundreds of thousands of Rand upgrading their facilities to meet the exacting standards of Match (the FIFA-sanctioned accommodation agency run by Sepp Blatter’s  ephew), only to have Match cancel their bookings when the demand failed to materialise (the expected number of foreign visitors has been downgraded from half-a-million to 300,000 in recent months).  I must admit, during recent renovations on my house, I spent a few extra thousand turning our basement into a granny-flat, with the vague thought that I’d recuperate some of the expenses by letting it out during the World Cup. Fortunately, I didn’t factor that imagined income into the bond-repayments.

For half-a-decade, road and air-commuters around the country have had to negotiate congestion and detours, making way for construction and renovation of highways, airports, bus-rapid-transit systems, and the controversial and wildly ambitious Gautrain (in Gauteng – “Place of Gold” – province, home of the  Johannesburg/Pretoria  megalopolis). And as the countdown of years has changed to months, the annoyance of these traffic inconveniences has morphed into a national doubt of whether it would all be finished in time – not alleviated by the constant barrage of local and foreign media hype about the lunacy of holding such a major international event in the developing world.

Each national predicament of the last five years – crime, xenophobic violence, presidential scandals, the half-crazed ravings of Julius Malema (mercurial leader of the ANC Youth League), the murder of racist icon Eugene Terreblanche, construction and transport strikes – has been magnified into a catastrophe by the ubiquitous World Cup lens.

And then there have been the frustrations around the event itself. FIFA’s opaque ticketing system – a myriad of random lotteries, direct-sale frenzies, more random lotteries, and sudden unexplained releases of more tickets, all conducted by a confusing combination of banks, internet sites and over-the-counter sales-centres – has left even the most sophisticated fans angry (again fuelled by a media storm).  Personally, I was gutted when a friend was informed three days after the first random draw that she had received all her requested tickets; only to ignite with joy when I received the same news a week later – several days after the FIFA-advertised final date for being informed; and then have to commiserate (without appearing to gloat) with others who’d received nothing. And the average South
African football fan is not sophisticated – the predominant method of getting into local games (even those involving the national team) is to pitch up on match-day and buy your ticket at the gate – or, at most, buy it at the local sports club, butcher or grocery store a couple of days beforehand.

How this will turn out on the day remains to be seen.

The Holland Bureau is pleased to announce a new section on the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

A special guest blogger will be giving first-hand analysis of various issues relating to one of the biggest sporting events in the world.

Stay tuned!