Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category
World Cup: Day 5
No folderol. No big celebrations. No nationalism.
This is the South Africa I know.
As many of you are aware, my biggest worry about this trip has always been being treated like a tourist, and thus being condescended to like a tourist.
But today I just was able to hang out at my friend’s house (and to recover from several days of intermittent sleep). It is raw and wet and cold and nasty in Cape Town. This might be South Africa’s most picturesque city, and possibly my favorite, but when I arrive and it is nasty outside, my inclination is to bundle up inside near the closest thing this country has to a heater.
I had a day of rest, but by midafternoon had settled in to watching the football. The first game, New Zealand-Slovakia, brought together two putative minnows who nonetheless seemed to draw inspiration from the Italy-Paraguay draw the night before. Ivory Coast fought Portugal to a draw in a game that might have helped decide the group of death and that instead pushed it on to a skeletal next round. And tonight at V&A Waterfront I was able to watch Brazil, by far the better team, struggle a bit against a game if robotic North Korean side.
I don’t want to seem as lazy as perhaps I am. But normally I do not have football, or soccer, or even rugby as the focus of my work. In fact my status as a sports fan if anything gets in the way of what I am supposed to be doing — researching, observing politics, giving a talk, finishing an article. Though to be fair when possible rugby or football or what have you is something I work into whatever I am doing.
And, ok, to be honest, tonight I am staying up until 3:00 in the morning, as my buddy has satellite and thus ESPN International, and thus the Celtics-Lakers game for the NBA Championship.
But stuff like this makes up the South Africa I know. When you live here, or just visit regularly, all of the extra stuff just becomes part of the erquation. The World Cup is wonderful. It’s great for South Africa. But in a country of 49,000,000 people it might be worth pointing out that some 48,000,000 will have little contact with the World Cup.
