Under hair so slicked that you half expected to find a Royal Dutch Shell oil tanker haemorrhaging among his curls, the smarmy official from the KNVB, the Netherlands’ football association, grinned.
It was a concessionary gesture. An acknowledgement that the reasons he had given the Mail & Guardian for stopping fans from entering the Abe Lenstra Stadion in Heerenveen with their vuvuzelas was incongruent with a previous spinning of the Dutch football supporters as boisterous but harmless Oranje-clad party-lovers as unobjectionable as a chunk of Gouda — which they do appear to be.
“[The vuvuzelas] are dangerous and could be used to hurt people, that’s why we can’t allow these things into the stadium [for a recent friendly between Holland and Paraguay]. They could be used as weapons so the rules don’t allow it,” the high-ranking official had maintained a few minutes earlier.
As the World Cup’s kick-off draws closer, the controversial vuvuzela becomes increasingly symbolic. At the Confederations Cup last year it highlighted the global North-South divide: Europeans were irritated and flustered, their intransigent stance on getting the vuvuzela banned hinting back to colonial behaviour and Western notions of decorum. The Brazilians couldn’t have cared less as they sambaed their way to winning the trophy.
South Africans’ defence of the horn reflected a siege mentality that sometimes consumes our national identity: a case of us against the world with an underlying jingoism apparent.
In Heerenveen it was the laws and rights of ordinary citizens being superseded by those of the footballing powers: inspired by the Confederations Cup, a group of Dutch entrepreneurs had manufactured and handed out (free of charge) their own version of the vuvuzela, the hoornietsmeer (hear nothing more).
It was an attempt to stoke World Cup fever in Holland after the country qualified for South Africa.
The entrepreneurs were granted permission from the Heerenveen municipality to distribute the lurid orange horns.
Only thing was, football authorities — as World Cup host city municipalities and residents are well aware — are a law unto themselves.
And fans — many of whom laughed raucously when informed by the M&G that the hoornietsmeer was considered a weapon of mass destruction by their football association — were told to leave theirs outside.
In Heerenveen the banning of the vuvuzela from inside Abe Lenstra Stadion was about crushing a spontaneous, Everyman’s response to the global game and the transnational fraternalism that is supposed to unify the football community regardless of language, gender, religion or race. It was about the entrenchment of repressive strictures on those who operate even vaguely outside football’s fiefdom. And a real killjoy.
It also highlighted the two worlds — and economies — that will exist during the World Cup right here in South Africa. A concern that Dutch economic minister for development cooperation Bert Koenders voiced to the M&G: “My hope is that the South African World Cup will not only be for a small elite who will go to the games but also for many other ordinary people. Likewise, there must be something to ensure that not only Fifa and companies connected to the Fifa brand will benefit from this World Cup — I don’t believe in the automatic trickle-down effect of the World Cup or that there is no monopoly by Fifa-linked companies,” said Koenders.
A Rainbow Nationphile who has spent much time in South Africa, Koenders singled out the “large informal sector” as one area that “should benefit from the World Cup, but I don’t think this is being done properly”.
He warned against the country considering the World Cup as a “silver bullet for economic development”, which would be “very superficial”, and noted that South Africa had “the worst Gini coefficient in the world”.
“The country needs a follow-up plan to ensure the enormous inequities are addressed,” Koenders said. “You must keep asking: ‘What is the sustainability of the jobs created [during the World Cup]?'”
Koenders conceded that, with host cities having already signed agreements with Fifa that restrict everything from street-vending to where citizens can take their dogs for a pee, the horse may have bolted for South Africa to dictate the terms of a “developmental World Cup” with Fifa.
Bidding to co-host the 2018 World Cup with Belgium, the KNVB will participate in a “Tale of Two World Cups” in South Africa. According to Hidde Salverda, the KNVB’s operations chief for the World Cup, the football association has booked out a game reserve near the Kruger Park and planned five-day jaunts around each Holland group match for its special guests, sponsors and VIPs. “We are looking for the true African experience, going on game drives and seeing some animals,” he said.
Salverda said the KNVB’s board members would stay for the entirety of the national team’s participation in the World Cup, with VIPs jetting into South Africa two days before a match, being whisked quickly away to the reserve near Phalaborwa and returning to the urban areas only on match day, before being closeted away in the “authentic” African idyll again.
This programme, he said, would ensure the safety and enjoyment of the World Cup for Dutch VIPs who will eat up 50% of the tickets allocated to the KNVB. The other 50% will go to ordinary punters belonging to the Oranje Club.
Holland is allocated 12% of the stadium capacity for each group stage match and 8% of each knockout stage match by Fifa. Salverda refused to disclose how much the KNVB would spend on its guests’ jaunt during the World Cup, saying it would depend “on the revenue from the event”.
The Dutch expect between 10Â 000 and 15Â 000 supporters for each match and Salverda said the association’s main concerns for fans are “crime”, “poor or no public transport”, the “long travelling distances to stadiums” from city centres “because Dutch supporters like to walk in large groups to the stadiums” and “black market tickets, which will be a huge problem in South Africa”.
For the Dutch punters though, South Africa appears to be either a wet dream come true, or a nightmare. Many of the Oranje-clad supporters the M&G spoke to outside Abe Lenstra Stadion expressed their sadness at not attending the 2010 World Cup. Their main reasons: crime and the cost of long-distance travel to South Africa.
In a country where no one has burglar bars on his or her windows and where many leave their doors unlocked, the stories of South Africa’s violent crime in the Dutch media have made the country a very scary place. “I’ll get murdered there,” one Oranje-overalled giant with teddy bears on his shoulder observed before spluttering incoherently into a vuvuzela.