When I searched for my website for some of my South African friends during this World Cup, I noticed that some of the lines from certain articles are posted right there on the internet – which has me fervently hoping that nothing bawdy or apolitical is taken out of context, and, posted out there for a personage unfamiliar with me to speculate on: I guess I was under the naïve impression that if one merely found thedoctorsinn site — they would read my bio and some of my titles and decide whether or not they wanted to have a look, and then, if they had either a strong positive or negative reaction – they could e-mail me. Ah well, live and learn…
I hadn’t been back to S. Africa for four-and-a-half-years – but could not miss the World Cup in my adopted country. When folks asked me what I thought of the changes – I said that I hadn’t really noticed any. When I responded thus – most people seemed flabbergasted, and, I had to explain to them that I had always seen S. Africa through the same eyes – and it was they who were now experiencing S. Africa through a different lens: I never changed my lens and their incredulity simply proved for me (yet again); that people can’t see beyond what they know: You have to learn something new and incorporate it into your existing schema to change your perceptions.
So my friends and acquaintances were curious as to how I “saw through” apartheid when it was operative from 1948 – 1994 (a much shorter period than American slavery) – and I simply suggested that I had experienced racism and prejudice wherever I had been and never determined apartheid to be worse than any other form of racism I had seen or read about.
I was yet again reminded of my musical nom de plume (that certainly is applicable to my penning here) – that I tend to be an anachronism: quite out-of-place-in-time (though I am meeting more-and-more kindred spirits these days)…
I recall my Brother Paul’s old girlfriend (a German) telling me last Summer that she had visited S. Africa recently and that there was no way they were going to pull off the World Cup in 2010, and, that the Cup, in all likelihood, would go back to Germany. Indeed, I’d heard a number of S. Africans suggest just the same thing. Yet pull it off the Rainbow Country did! And, with colorful, amazing efficiency!
Sure, there were a few glitches – with airport parking at a premium and a few jets unable to land (particularly in Durban) – but these incidents did little to mar the overall proceedings. And how about those vuvuzelas that irritated so many?! I’m telling you that (at least in Nelson Mandela Bay stadium in Port Elizabeth) it really wasn’t that bad. The British fans could easily drone out the vuvuzela with renditions of “God Save the Queen” – and DEEP PURPLE concerts (where it felt as if my ears were bleeding) – certainly prepped me for the feeble vuvuzela.
Many folks (myself included) thought that when Bafana Bafana made their exit from the tourney – that those vuvuzelas would subsequently disappear with diminishing home support – but they didn’t. The vuvuzela actually became an icon — with foreign fans snapping them up and maintaining the bee-like drone throughout the balance of the tournament. Go figure…who would have thought the vuvuzela to have such an addictive and enduring effect – to the point that New Zealand banned the “vuvu” and beat the Sprinkbok rugby team rather handily in the opener of the Tri-Nations.