South Africa is football crazy. Walk through any village, town or city and you’re never more than spitting distance from a match. Feet may be bare, ground uneven and balls intricately woven from the shreds of a thousand plastic bags, but the game goes on.
With the opening fixture of the ‘Soccer World Cup’ imminent, the whole country is on the edge of its seat as if awaiting the outcome of a decisive penalty. The international media questions the nation’s infrastructure and crime stats, while the local media questions its foreign counterparts’ agenda, but the man on the street (or, in this case, the plastic, primary school seat) is only worried about the football.
‘We’re the host nation,’ teacher and sometime football coach, Ernest, remarks. ‘If we escape our group, that will be quite all right. If not, it is a disaster.’
I try to reassure Ernest. I suggest that national team Bafana Bafana’s first two opponents, Mexico and Uruguay, are notoriously poor travellers, while their last, France, are a spent force. But my companion shakes his head. He seems none too convinced, although, frankly, he may be distracted by the football match unfolding in front of us. He barks a command at a little boy called Isaac. Ernest is speaking Tsonga, so I can’t understand what he’s saying. But I feel sorry for Isaac, whose patrol of the right wing repeatedly carries him into the manager’s line of fire.
I am sitting outside Vuyelani Primary School watching the home favourites take on Mhlahle Primary. I am somewhere on Bushbuck Ridge on the southwestern tip of the Kruger National Park in South Africa’s Limpopo Region. I am staying at Earth Lodge, one of the four sumptuous establishments (along with Bush Lodge, Little Bush Camp and Selati) that make up the Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve, no more than ten clicks (kilometres) from here. Sabi Sabi is surely one of the most luxurious and appealing safari camps in Africa. But, right now, I am visiting the company’s local Community Empowerment programmes, which encompass such concerns as childcare, community tourism and, lately, football.
