Living the World Cup with 45 kids.

If Soccer City is the beating heart of South Africa’s World Cup, deep in the heart of Soweto, then Green Point is its elegant neighbour, rising out of the wealthy suburbs, tucked neatly under Lion’s head, its translucent white exterior glimmering like satin in the Cape Town night. Until recently, Cape Town radiated a European nonchalance about the forth-coming festivities. The neon mile of Long Street had been pumped up for a couple of parades, and there was the draw deep within the walls of the Convention Centre, but aside from that, the intrusion of a vuvuzela or the broad sweep of a marauding Bafana troupe had yet to jolt this wealthy little corner from it’s morning lattes and spinach croissants. Tonight though it is different, and the World Cup is alive and well in Cape Town.

Bafana have just drawn the opening game with Mexico and the nation is buzzing with a new sense of hope and belief. We left Masiphumelele shortly after the Bafana goal in two taxis’s
bound for Sea Point. With no reception and only static, we rely on passing cars and petrol pump attendants to relay the scores. 1-0 becomes 1-1. The final whistle from Soccer City comes as we round Cape Town’s Waterfront and catch our first view of Green Point, enormous and shimmering with a deep sunset behind, everyone goes wild, not just the kids. We are now living in this World Cup.

We reach the roadblocks and encounter a mass of people of all shapes and colours marching north to the beat of drums and vuvuzelas. The police spot our passes and wave us through, we follow the column north and the kids hang out of the windows, greeting the visiting fans that respond with delight and reach for their hands as we pass. 

‘Urrrruguuuay! French! French! French!’ scream the kids. They know France, they have never heard of Uruguay. 

In the night the stadium looks vast and with the fan parks lit up around the perimeter the stage seems colossal, Olympian, something very important is going on here. The atmosphere is charged and the kids walk in two lines, holding our hands, with wide eyes. We first pass through the outer gate, into the main compound, passed the stands with street soccer demonstrations and competitions. 

There are fans from everywhere, not just France and Uruguay, but from every corner of the globe. It’s overwhelming and we walk on trying to take it all in. We reach the gates where we will hand over the tickets. We are met by representatives from Sony who will help us negotiate the massive crowds. The Stadium is now above us, hanging in the night air and radiating to the pulse of thousands and thousands of vuvuzelas, drummers and cheering fans. We catch the odd glimpse of the interior as we walk, huge Uruguayan flags draped over the gangways carrying messages in Spanish as you sometimes see on the TV coverage of the Copa America; another world come to our doorstep. 

We reach our zone and start to climb the gangway. I walk at the head of the line, with Lethu and Qamani, their tiny hands in my own. The noise grows and grows and slowly the pitch opens up from the glare of bright white. The stands are washed in colour; the air is a thick and heavy din. It is the greatest stage, and we stand, 46 children and adults from the tiny township of Masiphumelele, two grown men from the UK and one grown lady from South Africa, completely spell bound. Speechless and utterly in awe of the scale of Africa’s first World Cup. 

The anthems pass by. The kids prefer the Marseillaise and as it winds its way towards the crescendo they mimic the French supporters and begin to cheer. The French in turn try to coax their vuvuzelas into life but cough and splutter. The kids reply with volley of belching that comes effortlessly, through years of practice. It’s one of many little interactions that play out through the evening.

The match begins, the vuvuzelas drone on, building and falling with the passing passages of play. If the stadium seems modern and whitewashed, the vuvuzelas remind us we’re in Africa. Though their novelty is already wearing thin, their constant and incessant din reaches the furthest corner of the cavernous stadium, adding a richness and gravitas to the already charged atmosphere.

Mexican waves sweep the stadium. The kids spot their heroes; Anelka, Evra, Ribery, Malouda, all the names from the T.V. Henry arrives to a huge ovation and though it transpires that the match is a dud, it doesn’t matter; as non-partisan observers this is a spectacle, a showpiece for an event that’s been building for four years, one we thought we’d never see, but now a dream we are living out. It’s a surreal evening, running on heightened senses and full of emotion. We stay long after the final whistle, until the stadium is empty. Several on the kids fall fast
asleep, exhausted, and we pick them up as we make our way back to the buses, back over the mountain and back to Masi.

It’s late, past midnight, and the streetlights have failed. It’s dark. We run the kids home through their various streets, witnessing one drunken fistfight as we go. At the new informal settlement, where there are no roads and only trodden mud paths through the broken bush, Thomas accompanies the kids to their doors where they are swept up by their parents who have waited up. Masi is considered a relatively peaceful township, but these new settlements are poorly lit and seldom patrolled, there are troubles here. Days like these are important.

I am English, I am cursed

I wish sometimes that I wasn’t a fan and that I could look on with indifference and enjoy a simple sporting spectacle for the aesthetic and nothing more. No partisan cheer, no vested interest, just taking in the occasion and enjoying it. But I am cursed. I am fan. 

The roots go deep and are hard to shed, try as I might. I grew up a child in inner England, surrounded by lush playing fields with good facilities. A friend of mine’s father ran the kids after school league, we trained everyday and won most our games. Football was everything when I was a kid, my first world cup - Italia ’90 - England made the semi’s and returned home heroes. One day I wanted to reach those highs, football became everything. I was more than I fan.

Little did I know what becoming an England supporter entailed. Nobody warned me. My parents didn’t follow the game, or more accurately had given up. 1990 was a false dawn and a
litany of failures followed. I feel sure that the England team fails unlike any other, running aground in the calmest of waters, surcoming to the most preventable of calamities. I wander if every nation feels what we do, if we all share the same feeling just from a different perspective. But I often feel being an England fan exposes me to a unique type of emotional torment and pain. All the past glories of our small island, we now look for in our football team. We expect so much. From 1990 – 2010, my World Cups are nightmares revisited. Each time I tell myself it will be different, each time I think of new and ingenious ways to circumnavigate the pain of just watching England, but I’m yet to find a tonic.

So tonight for example: England vs. USA. More than just an opponent, the England football team cannot loose to the ‘Yanks’ at ‘soccer’. These are the shamed thoughts of my blunted football brain, but I cannot hide them, I am an England fan. The USA are more than worthy opponents, I know this, I’ve waited for England’s World Cup in grim anticipation. So I’ve attempted to harness the positive emotion of yesterday’s opening day events and watch the game with my friends in the township of Masiphumelele, arriving with a few friends with a large steak and ale stew, as they will be eating in the pubs of England. Maybe the immediacy of the surrounds will help take the edge off the match and reinforce that this is just a game: that the World Cup is about far more than simply football.

We are 12 in the shack; one living room and two bedrooms. 7 people sleep here. The TV sits on a dresser on top of which lies a string-less guitar and several faded football trophies. To the right is the kitchen, supported by a wooden strut that obscures the view of the chef, Thera, as he stirs the rice on the twin camping burner that also provides warmth from the building rain and wind outside. The carpet under foot is stained from the various leaks from the ceiling and we sit in a semi circle around the old Sony TV, the same model we had at home when I was much younger.

Most of the township is decked in England flags, or at least showing their support in one way or another. Premiership football is huge here and is the only international football to be televised aside from the domestic ABSA Premiership. More historically, the English also abolished slavery in the Cape in the 1800’s so we have a good reputation amongst the Xhosa of the Cape, so I feel welcomed as we sit in the wooden shack eating our stew, chatting away.

As soon as the national anthems draw to a close I realise I’ve not spoken in several minutes, I’m fixated on the T.V, I’ve turned my shoulder from Hanli who sits trying to hold my hand, my feet are drawn up underneath me and Thomas, our host and friend, indicates to get my feet off the main sofa, sitting pride of place in front of the TV. I apologise. I’ve known Thomas for years, he’s laughing though, this is a new side of my usually languid personality.

Gerrard scores within minutes; it looks so easy, cue celebrations. But an English fan is a nervous fan and the commentator reels off the leads we’ve blown in the past. The team look comfortable tough, we have players used to big occasions, a coach who’s been to the very top, a team that qualified scoring freely and unbeaten. We should be confident. I should be able to sit back and join in the conversation that drifts around the shack, but I can’t. 

Then another moment. Day one it was Bafana’s goal, when time stood still and a nation exploded. Today it’s calamity, and another nation implodes as Rob Green fumbles a ball that
barely trickles over the line from a tepid long-range effort to bring the USA level. It all comes crashing down. A bigger team would bounce back, a Brazil maybe, or a Germany. But not England, we are so fragile. We loose our shape, we snap at every opportunity, we scrap and scramble when our defence is pierced and we limp to the final line to collect a point. The shack is full of tuts.

‘England, they always blow it’.

It’s all too familiar and I could be anywhere, home or abroad, pub or a shack, the conversations will all be the same. There is no escaping, if you want to support England, this is your lot. 
 

Bafana have scored, Africa is alive

Five o’clock and a moment to set the silent dreams of a nation free and once again unite it in a moment of euphoria. Making our way down the street and out of Masiphumelele en route to Green Point Stadium, the township erupted with a people ready to believe that this was their World Cup, and that they did indeed belong. Joy on a level I have never once seen.

We had just left Kolobe St, in the northern confines of the township of Masiphumelele, en route to Green Point Stadium courtesy of Sony who had donated us 45 tickets. We’d
watched a stronger looking Mexico team run Bafana around the park in the first half, and the 60 or so packed into the tiny wooden shack had watched through narrowed, squinted eyes as every attack was repelled by a thread bare looking defence. In stark contrast, every Bafana attack was cheered wildly, to fever pitch. 

We’d timed our departure for town at half time. That Bafana were still clinging on was reason for cheer and the streets were full with the rich noise of trumpeting vuvuzelas. Everyone was dancing, pleased to still be in the game, in the tournament, avoiding the day one humiliation everyone feared here. The kids piled into the two mini-buses, their watching mothers’ ululating filling the air, proud to see their young children witness South Africa’s finest hour in the flesh. The kids jostled for space and chatted eagerly about Henry, Anelka, Evra; the names from the Premiership that plays late on free view here, filling the screens into the township nights. 

Then something happens. The taxi driver screams, unable to enunciate his words clearly, fumbling with the handle of the minibus he’s just jammed to a halt in the middle of the street, pulling the radio cables out in his scramble to leave the cab. People come falling out of the shacks, pulling at their shirts, crying, screaming, and wailing in disbelief. The bus doors fly open, the kids run into the street where they are picked up by mothers, fathers, brothers, anyone, and everything stops. Bafana have scored the first goal of the World Cup. A host nation, the lowest to partake in a World Cup, that has tiptoed round the dream of glory and been happy just to partake now believes. The World Cup is theirs. South Africa comes alive. It is beautiful.

This is street game

The kids run over the broken tarmac surface kicking a ragged and deflated football, its panels hanging off from the concrete wear and tear. Their bare feet seem to take the strain though. The pitch is the width of the narrow litter strewn street, the goals are breeze blocks, cracked and up turned. The pace is frenetic, the scores are high. There’s a chicken on the field, chased away by a stray dog, and a car passes by interrupting play. An angry woman tosses scoldings from a cardboard clad window, but they are lost in the din from a nearby boom box, so the kids carry on, and the onlookers, many adult, cheer. That same window, one can safely assume by the severity of the scoldings, was once glass. This is ‘street game’. Township street football: Grassroots football, South African style.

They play for ‘5 bob’, 50 cents. Each child pitches in a small handful of precious copper change and to the winners go the spoils, enough to buy chips and a cool drink from the coca-cola sponsored ‘Spaza’ next door, the tin-clad grocery store.

Players turn out mostly in Chiefs and Pirates shirts. Kaizer Chiefs, Orlando Pirates, the big teams from Soweto, the big teams in the township. They’re not from round here, this is Cape Town, and Cape Town Ajax sit close to the top whilst Chiefs and Pirates sit mid table, but this is South Africa and roots matter. Chiefs and Pirates are mainly black, Ajax are coloured. Their support comes from the coloured townships of the Cape Flats, here its all Chiefs. All Pirates.  Then obviously there’s Manchester, Chelsea and Liverpool. Everyone loves Liverpool here. ‘You’ll never walk alone’ they say in all things bar Scouse. English flags here fly in equal numbers to their South African counterparts. Rooney and co will be warmly received. They like the English in the townships.

World Cup 1

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of the World Cup. I grew up one of three brothers, in a sports mad household in middle England, far from the beach and the ocean that now claim so many of my waking hours. We’d tear around the house high on the sugars, flavorings and preservatives packed into the penny sweets we’d swipe from the post office, until my mother would snap and kick us out into the garden with a football.

There the three of us would spend many hours playing three and in, headers and volleys, re-enacting the moves of our heroes. Mine was Clayton Blackmore, wing-back for Manchester United, a working man’s David Beckham. These were the days of Division One, where the BBC retained coverage. There was no Premier League, no Sky TV; British football was a tough and dour affair, played on battered fields in wrought iron stadiums with standing sections, barriers and pies. Foreign signings were limited and English teams traditionally fared poorly in European competition, so the World Cup was our chance to peer into the glamour clad arena of international football.

It was Italia ’90, with the stick-man logo, Pavarotti doing the theme tune and Schillachi the super-sub scoring every game. England were there under the late Sir Bobby Robson, then just Bobby and leader of the plucky band of underdogs sent in from a recession wrought England. I can’t remember much of the pre-tournament hype, I was only nine at the time, but I remember the characters. Waddle’s mullet, Gaza’s ball grabbing, an ageing Shilton, bloodied Butcher, Linker, Platt and that last gasp volley to squeeze us past Belgium. They seemed eager, honest and hard working and there was little fanfare as there is today. There was an endearing human edge to the side, battling for all they were worth, as we fought the recession at home.

They won through to the semi-finals where they went out to West Germany on penalties in an epic encounter, I watched it peering from under the covers at a friend’s house, and returned home to a heroes welcome having won the hearts of a nation, in so doing speeding the launch of the Premier League, from where English Football would change forever.

But the lasting memory of the world cup was the match against Cameroon. It was the second round match up, or the quarter, I can’t quite remember, but it was the knockout stages, and we were up against this unknown quantity from Africa, the Dark Continent, of which I knew nothing. I remember looking Cameroon up on the map before the game, I remember the pre-match coverage and the images of a world I had neither seen nor ever imagined, I remember they had a 40 year old playing for them – Roger Mila –, I remember the deep green shirts; the colour of the jungle that I imagined enveloped this far away land.

I remember the strong and athletic figures they cut as they stood through their formal and colonial anthem. The speed, the rhythm, the freedom and flow and the total disregard for the traditional tactical play favoured by the European sides I knew so well. Cameroon actually played, with no fears of the consequences. This was new, it was foreign, and as I would come to know, inherently and unmistakeably African.

I remember Mila’s jig in the corner when he scored and I thought it was over, and the relief on Lineker’s exhausted looking face when he fired home the penalty that saw us through by the skin of our teeth, against this dark and unknown force that put Africa deep into my conscious.

So today, sitting in Cape Town, waiting for the cup to come, I am excited. And though I want England to succeed, in all their glitz and their pomp, a large part of my heart will lie with Africa, where I live today running a football charity, where football has a humble home much like the ones I saw on the TV in 1990, that opened my eyes to this weird and wonderful place, all those years ago.

The Ocean

I’m writing this from my ocean side apartment in Kalk Bay, Cape Town, looking out over the expanse of blue that is False Bay. Everyday I rise to this most effortless of backdrops, its ever-changing moods marking the passage of the days and seasons. As city life unfolds so uncomfortably around me, the changing faces of the ocean keep me grounded and I can start my day in peace. I owe this to the sea. Without it I would be lost.

I was too young to remember my first experience of the ocean, so I will tell it as my father recounts it to me. Growing up inland, we would head to Cornwall every summer, where we’d swim and sail and bodyboard. It was a family ritual, my grandfather would make the same pilgrimage with my father long before I was born and the M4 motorway heading west from our home to the seaside had been built. Theirs was a 16 hour trek across rural Britain with a caravan in tow, getting stuck on single-track hills until the local farmer arrived.

My grandfather would make bodyboards for the family, bending and shaping the wood using the weight of his car, then varnishing and finishing them in time for the summer. These same boards we grew up surfing with as kids, relics from a bygone era, and my father recalls the day he looked up in surprise to see me dragging a huge rented foam mal down to the water’s edge. From that moment, the wooden boards became forgotten family relics and the ocean became my obsession.

For me, the most significant time was the day I got my licence. I’d stay at my friend's house, it’d be 2am and we’d make the modern day three hour charge down be the motorway, frothing at the possibility of waves. These were the days before internet forecasts so we’d just go in hope. Some days it would be on fire. We’d surf all day and stop only to eat. Other days, it would be junk but we’d surf just as hard. Often, we’d sleep on the beach too. I remember once waking to dolphins playing off Treyarnon Bay near Padstow. It was sometime around 5am and a tractor was tilling the sand in the early morning light. I suited up and jumped in without a soul in sight. This was freedom on a new level and we lost ourselves in the object of our deepest desire.

As the single-mindedness of my teenage wave lust waned, so my appreciation for the ocean changed and I found myself becoming increasingly introspective about my surfing and what it meant to me. Through my obsession, I’d become increasingly ostracised from the circles I had grown up in and I began to feel increasingly ill at ease when land locked. The world I’d found at the ocean’s edge atrophied beneath the rotten concrete and asphalt of England’s cities. I began to realise it wasn’t just the surfing I missed, it was the ocean and the communities that thrived off it. In them, I could see myself.

Increasingly, I was drawn to the road in search of something different. I avoided the main surfing hubs and instead ended up in Peru, Ecuador, Northern and Southern Africa and the Western Sahara, spending time in some of the most impoverished yet wonderful and welcoming communities I’d met. We were united through our love of the ocean. It broke down the cultural differences that existed between us and allowed us to interact as friends with a common bond. I remember the fisherman in Peru, sharing with me his fish head stew by candlelight in his threadbare mud-brick cottage. He was picking the flesh from the gnarled jaw and sucking the eyeballs as the fillets had been sold at market so he could educate his children. A simple existence forged from the ocean and for which he gave thanks each day in prayer. He was happier than any man I’d met. And for every country I visited, there was another such example. All happy, all giving thanks to the sea - the great provider.

It was around this time I graduated and I was free to make my own path. I’d become deeply uncomfortable with the society I was in and the selfish and materialistic mindset it encouraged. Success was assigned a monetary value and drive was the key to achieving top dollar. And for what, I couldn’t quite see. Everything it extolled, I had found the opposite by the sea, and there I’d also found happiness. But I ceded to pressure, the responsibility to consider a future.

I tried for a short time to fit in in England’s industrial core but what I found was all I feared; materialism, indulgence, selfishness. It left me depressed and devoid of life. I longed for a return to the beach and the open water as there I found context and reason. It gave me simplicity, honesty and a tangible link to the natural world. The city was fake, artificial, a graveyard to the soul. The freedom I sought, I found on the natural fault line between ocean and land.

Today, the ocean is a part of me and indelibly so. It’s impossible to articulate a respect that runs so many fathoms deep. The lessons I’ve learned stretch far beyond the shoreline and have reached deep into my life. I cannot imagine a life without the sea, yet I still know so little and there’s so much still to explore.

In the ocean, I see life in all its beauty and fragility, and all of which I lost in the city whose lights extinguish the stars above and whose concrete smothers the earth below. In the sea’s constant flux I see spontaneity and renewal: the ebb and flow of the tide, the reshaping of a sand bar, the arrival of a new swell, the coming of the basking sharks at Harlyn Bay, the arrival of the Southern Rights during the winters of Cape Town. The ocean is alive and in delicate balance, where days unfurl and are subject to the chaos of the passing elements. Yet life in all its resilience wins through. It is here I find comfort in moments of doubt, assurance that I will be OK.

As I look out over the ocean at the day’s end, I am humbled.