Despite not having a qualifying team competing in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Cuba is a soccer-mad nation (or futbol mad, as it translates in Spanish). This has decidedly brought the travel ban placed on all Cuban citizens to a head.Seemingly adding insult to injury are the African and South African locals that Cubans see cheering from the stands. These are people who they have always been told are poor, and worse off materially than themselves, yet who are able to watch the soccer live, wear official merchandise and cheer for their country.
Many Cuban people met us, as South Africans, with a mixture of excitement and disapproval. After all, what where we doing in Cuba when the World Cup was on? They had a point. Word travelled around the Havanan grapevine that South Africans were in the streets, and people would yell "Sud Africa, Sud Africa, futbol!" as we passed by. Others would emerge from leafy shadows to express (to their great danger) how much they would have loved to travel to the World Cup, and how much the travel ban affected their lives. Everywhere we went we were followed
by the constant drone of vuvuzelas blasting though open doorways and out of shady bars.Fifty two years after the revolution, Cubans are becoming more and more frustrated by the confines of their borders. One can only wonder what levels the discontent might have risen to had the obedient, generous-spirited nation had a team competing for the cup on South African soil.
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