SOWETO, South Africa – Here in the township South Africa once tried to forget, they sang as the sun fell on Friday. A cool late breeze blew and if you listened close you could hear the buzz of the vuvuzela from Soccer City just a couple miles away. Hope danced cheap nfl jerseys in the leaves. Could anyone believe it? The World Cup had come to Soweto. For years they had watched Soccer City rise from the dusty plain just off the township’s edge knowing this day would come and yet with it now here it hardly seemed true. Soweto. Dirty Soweto. Scorned, hated and terrifying Soweto, built by Apartheid to enforce Apartheid, was now the place where the world had come. And on a television screen erected on a plot of grass next to Mbila Street called Diepkloof Park the miracle was happening twice. Not only was the planet watching Soweto but their country’s soccer team, Bafana Bafana, playing the traditional opening game, was beating Mexico. This was almost too much to imagine. Yet there was Bafana player Spihiwe Tshabalala, born just down the road, a player for Soweto’s own Keizer Chiefs scoring the first goal of this World Cup.
A great roar rose inside the park. Out in the distance, Orlando Stadium, the Chiefs’ home field, glistened in the twilight and everything suddenly seemed possible. They twirled flags and they waved their own vuvuzela horns.
Then they sang.
The song was “Shosholoza,” the haunting ballad hummed by generations of South Africa’s oppressed workers.
Shosholozah
Shosholozah
Ku lezontabah
Stimela siphum’ eSouth Africa
They were at this moment, powerful Soweto. Mighty Soweto. And maybe for once the world would know. And care. From the instant, after World War II when the old government bulldozed the thriving black section of nfl jerseys wholesale Johannesburg called Sophiatown and drove its residents to what it called the Southwest Township (or Soweto), the community has been fighting.
Here is where Nelson Mandela was raised, where the first great Apartheid protests of the 1970s rose and where the fires burned. Rage lived on Soweto’s streets. The more whites stayed away, spitting at the place, the more black Soweto screamed to make itself heard. Right where the residents danced and sang “Shosholozah” on Friday evening a memorial stands to Vuyani Mabaxa, a young man killed by police during a confrontation in 1991. The scars are never far away.
And yet they wanted those days to be forgotten on this evening.
“Things like [the World Cup] never came,” said Elnest Ndou as he watched the start of the game from a bench in the middle of the park. “Now we have freedom. That’s why we are enjoying this. Especially for our leader – Mandela. Without Mandela this would not have happened.
“Because of him this has happened.”
So the free township exhaled in the joy. As Bafana Bafana walked onto the field on the video board, the crowd screamed. Vuvuzelas hooted into the heavy air. Then President Jacob Zuma was on the screen and a “shussshhhhh” filled the park as everyone whispered for the vuvuzelas to stop. There was quiet as Zuma talked about Mandela, whose great granddaughter had been killed in a car accident the night before. Eyes stared at the ground.
A few minutes later, as the Mexican national anthem played, another “shushhhhhh” trickled through the crowd. “Respect the national anthem,” one man hissed. They did.
And when South Africa’s anthem, taken from the songs of its four greatest ethnic groups, played, they sang too.
Soweto was alive. None more so than about an hour later when Tshabalala flicked his leg at the ball, curling a perfect shot just under the crossbar to give South Africa its 1-0 lead. As afternoon turned to evening and darkness began to fill the park the possibility of the unimaginable began to take hold. Could Bafana Bafana, long scored as a joke of a soccer team in recent international play, really win? Could it beat mighty Mexico? The previous night, on the radio, a man was saying that four decades ago Martin Luther King predicted the idea of Barack Obama becoming president of the United States and if Obama could be president of the U.S. then surely Bafana Bafana could win the World Cup.
It didn’t matter that the logic made little sense. At this moment, anything seemed possible. Across the street from the park someone drove an old Volkswagon CTI onto the sidewalk, just in front of a neighborhood shebeen, or bar, opened his car doors and blasted music from the stereo. People milled all about, hoping, dreaming, willing to believe that something really, really good was about to come to Soweto.
Then Mexico scored.
Reality didn’t hit in the instant this happened. The vuvuzelas still played. The flags still twirled. Someone continued to sing. But slowly word moved through the crowd and disbelieving faces turned toward the screen to see the Mexican players celebrating. From afar, it was as if a set of big stadium lights had been turned off; joy slowly sinked into silence. The television announcer’s voice could suddenly be heard on the loudspeakers installed around the park’s perimeter.
But something wonderful happened. The sound of nfl jerseys wholesale the vuvuzulas rose again. The flags jumped back into the blackened sky. And there was singing again. Bafana Bafana almost scored. A shot smashed against the post. And wasn’t that just like Soweto? Something good always smacking the post? Never quite going in.
On the night South Africa’s dreams would fall short in a 1-1 tie with Mexico had to be seen as the greatest of victories. The residents of Soweto seemed to understand this as they filed in the streets, taking the noise and the joy into neighborhood alleys. It was a happy sound.
Just as it should be on the night Soweto stood tall.
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