Africa Is a Country

Day 2 and 3 Ear Plugs

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Day 2 and 3 Ear Plugs

By
Sean Jacobs

After watching Bafana Bafana’s close shave against Mexico on TV, my brother, David, and I went off to see France vs Uruguay at the new Cape Town Stadium. In short: imposing, massive structure.  We had really good seats. 8 rows back from the field on the halfway line. (We bought tickets made available after cancellations.)

The Highlights: Seeing thousands of people–not just South Africans–walking central Cape Town streets at midnight, using public transport (we were on a 12.30am train to Observatory, a suburb of Cape Town) and the buzz of the city center filled with multinational bands of fans. This is unheard of in a place where criminals, or fear of criminals, have forced people to not venture out after dark, even less take unreliable public transport.  (Trains are running specially for the World Cup late at night.)

One of my friends, also at the game, noted that if Cape Town can get its proposed rapid transport bus service completed and then to work, such a public culture could become permanent.

Oh, the match was underwhelming.

The French team managed to undermine themselves while Diego Forlan and ten defenders won a draw.

Quick take: Local mainstream media, especially the sports reporting, are still as bad as ever.  As a perceptive visitor noted: “It feels like the 1970s.”  For most people the internet is still not a factor in following the game. It is still TV.

Finally, my bugbear: I am looking forward to my second live match at the stadium Monday night, Italy vs Paraguay and will definitely bring earplugs again.

I am still astonished how the annoying plastic vuvuzelas have become associated with football culture.  And as being an inescapable part of African football. Of course, a massive corporate push has a lot to do with it. Like this popular ad for one of the local cellphone services that control the mobile industry here like a cartel:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfIZ7krIg8E&w=500&h=307&rel=0]

* I am picking up on lots of cultural developments, and will blog this when I am back. For now it is strictly, short, fast stream of consciousness posts.

— Sean Jacobs

Further Reading

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.