Soccer Comes Home

On Friday , a free South Africa, sixteen years after the end of apartheid, will say a big Hullo to the world. Nelson Mandela, the chief architect of the remarkable story that has made South Africa a rainbow nation will be at the centre stage, frail but inspiring, weak in the body but resolute in the spirit. Friday did not only set the stage for the latest chapter of a compelling African story of struggle, perseverance, achievement and reconciliation, but will again engrave South Africa not only as a major African economic power and cultural nerve centre. It will offer a rare taste of the world’s biggest sports extravaganza on the world’s poorest but soccer mad continent. In many ways, the 2010 World Cup is a rare sort of homecoming in many ways. Today, African soccer players, in spite of growing up in weak and disorganized and poorly funded national leagues, ply their trade in the most expensive soccer leagues in the world. What would Chelsea be without Michael Essien and Didier Drogba, Inter Milan without Samuel Eto’o? The likes of George Weah, Jay Jay Okocha, Samuel Kuffour, Nwanko Kanu, El Hadji Diouf have gone, dazzled and become stuff of legend for small and huge European clubs, perhaps in ways much more than how they are revered in their home countries. In soccer, Africans have adopted a sport, owned it and taken it to their teachers and masters, enjoyed themselves and earned bagfuls of cash in the process. The world has been to Brazil for the samba, to Germany for the hard knock style, to Japan and South Korea for a sea of new football crazy lovers and for a sneak peak of Africa, to France in 1998. No wonder when Italy lost the world cup final in 1998 to France, some Italian newspapers published the picture of the much revered trophy in the map of Africa! It has been a long-time coming. So, in a way, African soccer stars for the first time will go to the world cup – in Africa. They will not be talking about how soccer-mad Africa is to their wealthy team-mates from Europe, the Americas and Asia. They will be standing by to watch the surprised look on the faces. This homecoming for the world’s most popular game might have more serious ramifications for the game in Africa. Although the modern game of soccer was born in England, it is often said that the Brazilians have perfected it. In Brazil where the game became popular in early decades of the last century, a unique Brazilian style has been born and has made Brazil the most successful country in the World Cup, taking home the trophy a record five times. The Brazilians’ game has evolved form the multiracial characteristics of the Brazilian community and most of the creative infusion was and is still bred in the poor favelas, Portuguese for shantytowns or slums, in Brazil which are heavily populated by people of African descent. In Africa, football skills have been bred in our own favelas, conveniently called soccer slums. This May, slum children in the continent’s biggest slum, Mathare in Nairobi, Kenya would have hollered watching home kid Macdonald Mariga lift the Champion’s League with Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan for the first time for an East African. This June, kids in the famous Soweto slum will not only catch the action on televisions, as their home team tries to claim history, the roar of thousands of football fans will overshadow every sound as Soccer city stadium, a stone’s throw away hosts highly billed national teams. The Soccer City stadium, Africa’s largest stadium, with a capacity of just below 95,000, next to an African slum goes to show where soccer in Africa is going – up. 2010 might signify our own Brazilian-like soccer evolution that will spew raw talent from ordinary open air mud fields. The fact that South Africa is the first African country to host the World Cup might appear unfair especially to the West African football powers like Nigeria and Ghana or North Africa’s Egypt and Morocco who have been more successful in soccer over the years. But South Africa remains the place with one of if not the most organized and well funded local leagues. Also, the rainbow nation remains a unique African country that puts aside the western media’s obsession with underdevelopment in Africa with a robust economy, a vicious fight against HIV and a high crime rate, a proud identity of the struggle for freedom and a forward looking nation of black, white and everything in between. It is difficult to tell any South African story without mentioning Nelson Mandela. South Africa and Mandela sometimes are like one of the same thing. One might think one cannot live without the other. Today, when Madiba waves, more television cameras will be watching him than any other person in that stadium, just so people can catch a rare glimpse of the old magic of the man. In 1996, when the new multi racial South Africa, fresh from an international sports ban hosted its maiden Africa Nations Cup, it won! Later when South Africa missed by a whisker to host the 2006 world cup in a controversial way and when it later won the chance to host it, the face of that man carried the hopes of a nation, like always, and those of a continent on his frail shoulders. 2010 will also be the year when Africans have travelled in planes, trains, cars and ships to South Africa to claim a piece of rare African history. While the rest of the world wonders whether the stadiums will fill with fans from other parts of the world, Africans were busy arranging their itineraries to travel south. The rest will be glued on their televisions to be part of the new African religion – at least this 2010. kelviod@yahoo.com