The opening ceremony of the 2010 Soccer World Cup burst on to the Soccer City stadium floor in a flurry of flags, fireworks, dancing and singing on Friday afternoon.
Fighter jets screamed overhead to announce the start of events, and planes streamed plumes of coloured smoke as dancers formed various formations.
The first big name up was Thandiswa Mazwai, resplendent in a maroon dress with an entourage including a gigantic dung beetle. It gave the Bafana Bafana players a lesson in dribbling as it pushed a giant soccer ball around.
Balanced on the heads of several dancers, the beetle was a neat African twist on the Chinese-dragons dance.
Indeed, there were shades of Beijing 2008 with a white-clad troupe marching military style. The Soweto Spiritual Singers, also all in white, formed a chorus as American rapper R Kelly made his much-anticipated entrance, dressed all in black.
His performance of Sign of a Victory was short and possibly sweet, though it was hard to tell over the roar of thousands of vuvuzelas. An announcement asking the crowds to hold off on the notorious South African sporting instrument proved, predictably, ineffectual.
The ceremony, which lasted for about half an hour, included a surprise performance from celebrated South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, as well as popular Nigerian musician Femi Kuti. Other musicians were Hip-Hop Pantsula and Algerian Afro-pop artist Khaled, who sang a piece uniting the six African countries taking part: Algeria, South Africa, Ghana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria.
Sobering moment
A shot on the large overhead screens of Desmond Tutu jiving enthusiastically to the music had the audience wild, while a pursed-lip Naomi Campbell in sunglasses had one twitter user warning people to hide their cellphones from the notoriously violent supermodel.
There was a brief shot of former president and icon Nelson Mandela — a sobering moment in the wake of his great-granddaughter’s death late on Thursday night..
Kwaito act TKZee had a turn on the patterned floor of the calabash-shaped stadium, while dancers unfurled flags.
One particularly impressive formation saw dancers unfurl African print scarves to form the continent of Africa, with footprints on the countries represented. More scarves and dancers joined to form the rest of the world, with a preponderance of footprints in South America.
Many of the yellow-and-green clad spectators made it by the ceremony’s start at 2pm, but there were still large blocks of orange seating empty as Johannesburg’s highways gridlocked with the streams of fans to the stadium.
By the end of the opening ceremony, however, the seats had begun to fill up in the 94Â 000-seater venue, South Africa’s biggest stadium.
After the musicians and dancers left, the crowds went wild as Bafana Bafana danced their way on to the field to kick off the first Soccer World Cup to be held on the African continent.