Soweto: Boere with Vuvuzelas

2 June 2010


Last week my friend Jan, a very talented photographer and fellow pavementista, told me over cappuccino at Bicccs, our regular morning coffee haunt, that he had gone to Soweto to watch the Super 14 Rugby semi-final match between the Bulls and the visiting Kiwi Crusaders team at Orlando Stadium. Jan waxed lyrical. He said that the vibe was fantastic and that it ranked as one of the best experiences of his life. He socialized with the incredibly friendly and welcoming local residents, drank beer in several shebeens and took over two hundred photographs.

I had visited Soweto before on two previous occasions, once as a law student in the mid eighties as part of a forensic medicine group, to attend an autopsy at Baragwanath Hospital, not a very pleasant experience and then again in the early nineties to escort a visiting American who wanted to drive through Soweto with obligatory stops at a shebeen and a spaza shop. I had never attended a major sporting event in Soweto and being a rabid rugby follower, I was keen as mustard to watch the Super 14 Rugby final between the Bulls and the Stormers.

I need to state at the outset that I am neither a Bulls nor a Stormers fan. I am a long-suffering Lions supporter who lives in eternal hope each year that my team will find the magic which presently eludes them but which they once had in bucket loads under the likes of Gerald Bosch, Paul Bayvel, Gerrie Germishuis, Ray Mordt, Garth Wright and Kobus Wiese to name but a few Transvaal and Springbok rugby stars of old. I grew up on the East Rand and played my school and club rugby in Kempton Park and at Wits. My team lost every game they played this year in the Super 14 but I still love them and support them. You don’t suddenly switch sides or allegiance when things go badly for you. Things will eventually turn for the Lions as it has for the Bulls and the Stormers.

To mark the historical significance of the occasion, I did what was once unthinkable. I bought a Bulls rugby cap for R60 and wore it. I reasoned, everybody loves a winner and now being a resident of Pretoria, no harm done to recognize the success and outstanding achievements of the Bulls team both on and off the field and to congratulate them for seizing the initiative and for having the foresight to choose Orlando Stadium in Soweto to host the semi-final and the final. A move admittedly forced by necessity but an inspired move nonetheless. Why didn’t my own team the Lions think of this? Orlando Stadium is literally in their back yard. Now they’ve suddenly woken up and debating whether they should host a money-spinning rugby test at Soccer City.

Rugby is like a religion in my life. It is the only sport I loved playing and the only sport I now love watching as a spectator and arm-chair critic. Like many other men I know, I live for Saturdays so that I can decline boring dinner and birthday invitations and watch rugby instead. Cardiologists may disagree with me but there is nothing to beat a weekly diet of salted beef biltong and blood sports to satisfy our most primal and atavistic instincts.

Soccer may be acknowledged worldwide as the beautiful game but I only have eyes for rugby. This is an anomaly in my culture because most Greek men I know are soccer mad. Rugby is an unashamed tribute to the virtues of testosterone. It is a celebration of sheer brute force and physicality. Nothing can match the controlled savagery of a rugby match in the toughest rugby competition in the world played between the teams of the world’s three leading rugby playing nations. Only rugby manages to combine the speed, efficiency and accuracy of the rapier with the brutality of the bludgeon. With their scrum caps, their strapped, bandaged and taped hands, arms and thighs, rugby players look more like modern gladiators than sportsmen. In comparison far too may soccer players behave and look like indulged, pampered and spoilt prima donnas.

You won’t find rugby players and their coaches demanding to have special hands-free toilets and bidets installed in their hotel rooms. Show a rugby player to a bidet and the chances are he’ll rinse his gum guard or wash his socks in the damn thing. Some of the venues hosting the visiting FIFA World Cup soccer nations have gone to great lengths to ensure that each soccer player’s room is identical down to the last, minute detail, lest an oversight hurts their feelings and affects their performance. When did soccer become like this? Soccer players usually came from poor families and were tough, determined individuals who knew how to survive and rise above the challenges in their gritty, crime-ridden neighbourhoods. As one Greek commentator put it, soccer was the ballet of the working class. Now the empty cult of celebrity and far too much easy money has ruined them.

By Tuesday morning I had given up all hope of going to the final. Several friends went to Computicket but all the tickets had sold out. I called a few friends who had contacts in the rugby fraternity but they were not too optimistic about our chances of securing tickets. Then on Friday night I got a call from my friend Louis, a devoted if not fanatical Bulls supporter with the good news that he had a ticket for me. I was ecstatic. We were going to the final.

On Saturday morning we queued in the mild autumn sun at Supersport Park in Centurion to board the line of City of Tshwane municipal buses waiting to take us to Soweto. The Bulls faithful were there in all shapes and sizes. A sea of blue in full battle dress, some faces looking like Avatars with horns plastered in blue war paint carrying campaign flags and battle ribbons at totem pole height, wearing their Bulls jerseys, caps, blue leather cowboy hats and scarves of their beloved team. Some mostly male fans looked like urban Vikings, wearing their blue plastic construction hats with massive bulls horns attached to either side of their hard hats.

On the fashion front and with winter upon us, “Puss in Boots” season has finally arrived. It’s that time of the year when women all over South Africa do the unthinkable and start behaving like lemmings. They do their utmost to look alike by tucking their jeans into knee high boots. The Bulls female boot brigade was represented in significant numbers. They wore tight jeans with sequined bottoms and flat soled suede boots, boots decorated with straps and tassels, shiny black leather boots to make any Gestapo officer green with envy, lethal looking sharp toed boots and boots with dangerously high stiletto heels resembling miniature Eiffel Towers. Some of the more stylish and original thinking female fans had their hair held back with Alice bands adorned with small flashing blue devils horns.

The drinking started early. Some beefy fellows were clutching what looked like giant plastic pitchers filled with a dark brew of sorts. As soon as we got onto the bus, my travelling companions cracked open and downed a few cans of cold Klipdrift brandy conveniently pre-mixed with Cola for such occasions. The buses we travelled on looked new and were very clean but the seats were far too narrow and completely unsuitable for larger South African physiques. They were clearly designed for tofu eating Japanese train gropers and not for burly pap, boerewors en vleis Bulls supporters.

Our bus driver pulled off the highway twice en route to Soweto, the first time to get directions. It seems we had a black bus driver who had never been to Soweto before. A few minutes later a car flying South African, Bafana and Bulls flags pulled over in front of us and another black man handed a map to our driver. Then we waited for more flag flying buses to pass us and we joined a convoy of buses headed for Soweto.

We stopped again at the side of the highway just before the Rivonia off ramp for what we use to call a “piss parade” in the army. A dozen or so men quickly scrambled off the bus and climbed up a steep grass embankment. Here they turned their backs to the bus, lined up almost in formation and relieved themselves overlooking the Woodmead golf course and the Sandton skyline beyond, in full view of the other motorists on the highway. A few even found a free hand and the time to light a cigarette while they were doing this. I marveled at their dexterity. This was all new to me and some of the females on the bus cheered them on and even took photographs of their men folk with their cell phones. Someone needs to brief FIFA and the soccer fans visiting us from abroad that this is a time honoured local custom like braaivleis adhered to and enjoyed by all races and something you cannot exactly do in Sydney or Zurich. Once you have experienced how liberating it is to pee in the great outdoors under an African sky you’ll be hooked forever and return to Africa for more fun and occasional violence.

Under a pale blue Highveld sky we drove past the caked yellow soil of Johannesburg’s distinctive mine dumps and then turned off the Golden Highway and drove the final stretch into Soweto. The bus pulled up outside Orlando Stadium. For most it was their first time in Soweto and I heard someone comment with surprise in Afrikaans that the place didn’t look too bad. We headed straight for the beer tent to down a few quick cold lagers and to take in the unfolding scene. A stylishly dressed young black man stood next to us beside his pretty and petite kugela girlfriend. She wore expensive sunglasses and like her white sisters from Pretoria, she too had tucked her jeans into shiny knee high boots. He wore a black plastic hard hat with the skyline of Johannesburg and the SA flag carved in front of his hat. He wore a Bulls flag, draped proudly around his shoulders like an ankle length cape. He smiled and posed for photographs.

Another altogether less stylish young white man wore his Bulls cap back to front and had taken the trouble to sew a very long, stuffed, homemade blue penis complete with attached testicles onto the back of his cap. He looked very pleased with himself as it dangled and bounced in front of his eyes. I was tempted to call him Mr. Dickhead but thought better of it because he looked very fit despite being completely plastered. My travelling companions were a very agreeable, polite and hospitable bunch probably because they were educated at the University of the Free State, the home of all pleasant and moderate Afrikaners and the team I support when not shouting for the Lions. They shared their food, drink and biltong with me and insisted on speaking English to me even though I replied in fluent Afrikaans. There was a constant exchange of good natured banter, rivalry and jokes between the Bulls fans and the handful of Stormers supporters standing at the Castle watering hole. SA Breweries must be smiling after Saturday.

The most remarkable thing about Saturday was to see Afrikaans speaking Bulls fans from Pretoria adopting the vuvuzela as their own and the Sowetans embracing the Bulls as their own team alongside Orlando Pirates and Bafana Bafana. I have no doubt that the Bulls now have a larger black fan base than all the other Super 14 rugby franchises in South Africa. Here were the Boere, an endangered rugby mad minority adopting the symbol and customs of the majority and of a sporting code they don’t much care for. People carried vuvuzelas of various sizes and colours and blew on them continuously like seasoned soccer fans. The noise in the stadium at times was deafening and some Stormers supporters sitting in front of us wore ear plugs. They were not a very friendly bunch. An elderly woman, somebody’s grandmother back in Belville showed my friend Louis the finger when he jokingly told her to sit elsewhere.

Some size obsessed individuals wanting to impress the locals, brandished two metre long vuvuzelas on steroids. My friend Louis handed me a yellow vuvuzela courtesy of Liberty, with a sticker “Own Your Life” stuck onto it. I immediately tore off the sticker but kept the vuvuzela. The suits and actuaries at Liberty have yet to figure out that it is far better to live your life than pay Liberty to help you own something which is yours to start with anyway. This was the same company that refused to pay for my son’s delivery on a technicality after we had paid them premiums for a year. We fell out of their acceptable prescribed window by two weeks. Their share price is not doing too well.

We left the beer tent in search of more beer and fun at the Wonder Bar and shebeen across the road from the stadium next door to the Tsotsetsi Tuck Shop where they sell a quart or a 750ml bottle of Black Lable beer for R14. The bar is situated next door to the Tsotsetsi Tuck Shop. A few young black boys gathered around us and decided to hold an impromptu vuvuzela blowing competition. We promised them that there would be prizes for the best vuvuzela player. They blew their hearts out and all walked away winners clutching R10 and R20 notes. One little guy had somehow missed out on all the action and felt excluded from our spontaneous largesse. He tugged on my friend Louis’ sleeve, who stands over two metres tall and asked him for money. Louis asked him: “If I give you R10 what will you do in exchange?” “I’ll give you R3 change,” came back the cheeky reply.

Another enterprising young lad who could not have been much older than twelve or thirteen was trying to sell a pair of blue plastic devils horns. One of my drinking buddies thought he heard the boy ask for R50, which he would have paid had the boy not corrected him and said with indignation, “No sir, R50 is far too much, the correct price is R30.” Then my friend told the lad that he wanted to buy a back pack. The lad replied in perfect English that he was in charge of “merchandising.” He would go back to his “associates” and return with the back pack. This young boy has a bright future ahead of him and could teach MBA’s a thing or two.

We headed back towards the stadium to take up our seats, to avoid the last minute rush. A tall blonde man walking next to me, a complete stranger, spoke to me in Afrikaans and told me that the last time he had visited Soweto it was on a police township patrol riding in the back of a Casspir. I smiled and nodded. This time around he was far more welcome in Soweto but I somehow wonder if the significance of his return meant anything to him. It does however show that South Africa has changed for the better and come a long way since the dark days of the state of emergency in the mid 1980’s.

The rebuilt Orlando Stadium does not look like much on the outside. Compared to Soccer City, its flashier, larger and more expensive counterpart nearby, it looks very serious and utilitarian with its steel roof cladding. But once you step inside it is a beautiful stadium, with no sharp lines or edges. It is an intimate, enveloping stadium, with good seating and a perfect pitch which brings you closer to the action. It has excellent, clean facilities, wide passages and entrances for easy access and exit.

As for the match itself, it was a fast and furious final, a classic derby between two worthy adversaries and traditional rivals. There was drama, bone-crunching tackles galore as players put their bodies on the line and much blood letting as there always is in these fiercely contested encounters. In the end the Bulls had the composure, the experience and the big match temperament to win. It was a historic match at a historic stadium at a significant time in South Africa’s young developing democracy. The Bulls took the trophy but South Africa won on all other fronts. South Africa will continue to surprise and confound its harshest critics as it matures. South African’s are wonderful, talented, dynamic, resourceful and resilient people when we are not killing each other over a car, a cell phone or a farm. Our farmers, plot dwellers and home owners rightly feel that a genocidal war is being waged against them by callous criminals and nobody in our government cares enough to do anything to stop the killings.
All the usual high-ranking politicians attended the final. They sensed a photo opportunity and were quick to proclaim a turning point. They tried in vain to find something new and meaningful to say but mostly all they managed was to try and bask in the reflected glory of an event much larger than themselves. In the end their words were empty rhetoric and they were rightly eclipsed and reduced to an irrelevant side-show by the magnitude of the event. President Jacob Zuma was there, as was the leader of the DA and Premier of the Western Cape, Mrs Helen Zille. Trevor Manuel and his wife Maria Ramos sat snuggled closely together, looking like a happy couple enjoying the event.

After the match and once out of the stadium it took only five minutes to board our bus, this time a luxury coach with comfortable padded seats and a black bus driver who was listening to Classic FM before he switched to a more contemporary music station for his passengers. The metro police for once did something useful and with blue lights flashing escorted a convoy of slow moving busses onto the highway and all the way back to Centurion. It was a very well run logistical operation from beginning to end and it was good to see things run so smoothly in South Africa without major incident.

Ben Trovato in his recent Sunday Times Whipping Boy column compared Orlando to the new Saigon, a comparison with the Vietnam War which somehow escapes me. He wrote about the event in unflattering and offensive terms as “the day rugby forced hardened racists to mingle with hardened criminals.” He says he is going to make a movie about the day and call it “Convictus.” This portrayal is neither fair nor accurate even though it is written in jest. The one good thing to emerge out of FIFA’s occupation of our country is that it forced the Bulls to host the final in Soweto but they could just as easily have decided to stage the match at Ellis Park or in Witbank for that matter but instead and to their credit they chose Orlando Stadium.

I don’t usually enjoy large crowds and stadium experiences but last Saturday in Orlando gave me hope of a promised and long awaited normality in our relations with other South Africans. It made me proud and happy to be a South African. More than one person said that they would gladly return to Soweto. Soweto is the matriarch of the old townships with impeccable political and struggle credentials. It has always been a far more cerebral and celebrated place as the home of South Africa’s pre-eminent black political, cultural and economic elite.

And I’ll wager that given a choice a black township resident relates more and places greater trust in a gruff, no nonsense, straight talking and sometimes abrasive Afrikaner than a patronizing but polite Anglo liberal. They have a greater chance of finding common ground. At least the Afrikaner is more honest. Some people criticize them as being boorish, crude and unsophisticated but there was a time when “sophisticated” with its roots in the Greek word “sophistry” was not a very flattering term.

Afrikaners are the unrecognized and uncelebrated backbone of this country. They are the whites who will stay because they have no choice but to make this country work. They are the people we turn to when we need the leak in our roof fixed, our body, car or computer repaired. We are all crippled by the racist baggage of our past which we need to acknowledge and then hopefully discard our collective guilt so that we can move forward. Nelson Mandela was right when he said that sport has the power to build bridges and unite us. Some cynics say that Saturday’s event changes nothing and it is premature to talk about national unity and forging a national identity. Admittedly we still have a long way to go before we can fully normalize race relations in our country but Saturday’s final was a very good start and the more such events take place the better our chances to succeed.

We can all learn from the fine example of the people of Soweto. Sowetans understand and live the ancient Greek concept of philoxenia, the very appealing, inspirational and aspirational idea that to be fully human we need to welcome and embrace strangers with warmth, friendship and hospitality. In Soweto they call this ubuntu. Ubuntu is all about goodwill and celebrating a shared identity and common humanity regardless of colour, religion or political affiliation. Thankfully South Africa has always had religious tolerance but as Clem Sunter points out we need a lot more social harmony and cohesion, an emerging national consensus if we are going to achieve long term success as a country.

Graeme Hoskens writing and reporting for the Pretoria News got it right and summed it up the whole experience in one word, ubuntu. He said that he was “overwhelmed by the sense of true friendship” he felt. He wrote that the event made him feel that “we all have one thing in common. We are all proudly South African filled with the spirit of ubuntu.” Other people had similar stories to tell. The residents of Soweto were pleased and happy us whiteys were there. Cape based Ben Trovato is out of touch. He got it wrong this time because he wasn’t there. Maybe it’s a case of sour grapes coming from the Cape.

I now know that I can return to Soweto any time to watch my favourite rugby games in a tavern or a shebeen. I know that I will be warmly received and welcomed like a friend especially if I wear my newly acquired Bulls cap. It will probably be safer, cheaper and a lot more fun than sitting in Waterkloof. In time I may even convince them to install a cappuccino machine and put chakalaka on my panini.

I’m happy to report that ubuntu is alive and well in Soweto. You will make faster, genuine and more enduring friendships in Pretoria and Soweto than you ever will in Cape Town or Perth. The next time there is a major rugby match or test I shall hold my clenched fist in the air and shout:

Amandla!
Awetu!
I’m on my way to Soweto!

Costas Ayiotis
Pretoria