Mzansi Madness - Laduuuuuumma!

As one of the many, many South Africans abroad, it has been painful to be absent from the country during the FIFA World Cup 2010. Thanks be to satellite television then, and to the soccer-mad spirit in both Canada and Cuba (neither of which are competing).

Imagine, if you can, how surreal it is (after living in a country where many people did not know that South Africa existed) to walk into a bar of a five star hotel and to see the South African flag on every single table. Or to explore the colourfully tattered streets of Havana while hearing the constant drone of vuvuzelas blasting through doorways and out of bars. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves where we are, such as when walking through downtown Toronto and being stopped in our tracks by a Bafana shirt in a shop window, or catching a fleeting glimpse of a passerby with the telltale six-colour flag on the back of their neck.

It is not only our accents that now betray us (not very well as it turns out, because almost everybody thinks we’re Australian) but the colours we wear, the flag we carry and the anthem we sing. While proudly wearing my new Bafana zip-up top on the plane I was acutely aware that despite being dog-tired and combating the after effects of food poisoning and sinusitis, I had to be friendly and polite to everyone I saw. After all, I had identified myself as South African.

Although we met many lovely people in Cuba, it was with mixed feelings of excitement and disapproval that they learnt we were from South Africa. After all – what were we doing in Havana when the FIFA World Cup was playing in our back yard? They had a point. One day, while walking through shady pre-revolution avenues to reach the Museum of the Revolution itself, different people started approaching us, shouting: “South Africa, South Africa, Futbol!” Yip, word had gone round the Havanan grapevine that South Africans were in the streets. Through the people we met, we learnt that despite not having a competing side, the FIFA World Cup was a major bone of contention within Cuba. Unable to travel abroad, Cubans are becoming more and more frustrated within the confines of their country. To add insult to injury, many Cuban soccer fans could not believe that people in Africa (who they had always been told were poorer and worse off than them) could go and watch the soccer live.

Aside from one negative article in our local town newspaper (which reads as though the journalists only made it up to Grade Two), the international feedback seems incredible. All the games look so professionally produced, the crowds are colourful and full of gees, and South Africa is once more doing itself proud. For this month anyway, the world has gone Mzansi mad. Viva Mzansi – fo ‘sho!