The Canadian Sportsman
Off Course
Back To Off CourseJune 14, 2010
For the record, I have not, yet, seen Invictus. Apart from Morgan Freeman botching Nelson Mandela’s accent, I hear it’s a grand, uplifting film about the hopes and dreams of a reborn rainbow nation as realized through the South African rugby team.
I am, however, fervently cheering for Bafana Bafana (Zulu for: The Boys, The Boys), South Africa’s soccer team, despite the improbable odds against them and despite the fact watching soccer is about as much fun as airline travel.
My mother is South African. I have two aunts, two uncles and three cousins and their families that have lived there all their lives. Despite what you may have heard about white South Africans of English origin, my relatives are wonderful people who happen to live in a magical and troubled land. We are all quite close despite the distance.
The World Cup has rarely interested me, but I’ve been surprised with how captivated I’ve been by this one on a cultural level. Likely, my interest has been piqued by the fact South Africa is the host nation. But there’s also something to be said for finding a rooting interest in a country or two, mostly on the grounds of family heritage.
Here lies the real value of the World Cup, particularly when your own country isn’t in it — finding something within yourself with which to identify.
In our house, with Canada about as proficient at soccer as Brazilians are at hockey, that means South Africa comes first — with a myriad of “second teams” claimed by my wife and three children for a host of plausible and inexplicable reasons.
Surely, we could do without those annoying plastic horns, the vuvuzelas, which sound like an incessant swarm of bees. Yet, despite talk of them being banned, there’s something to admire about mirthful South Africans winking as they claim them as part of their cultural heritage, basically telling the rest of the world to shove it.
An old Marxist professor or two or mine would say all this sports stuff is an opiate for the masses. But I believe sports have the power to unify, to transcend. If so, few places need victory more than South Africa in the post-Apartheid era, which has been plagued by crime, AIDS, political scandal and socio-economic upheaval of the highest order.
Vuvuzelas or not, I would love to see them celebrating in the streets of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Soweto. I can’t begin to comprehend what winning the World Cup might do to unify a divided nation, though I’m not naïve enough to believe it will cure serious ills.
For the moment, anyone who roots for the underdog, for the best storyline, surely appreciates the implication of an unlikely victory by the South African side.
For me, it goes much deeper. Bafana Bafana is part of my tribe.
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