2010 Soccer World Cup Carnival
The accolades to South Africa, the host, that managed to rise to the occasion in such a grand sweep of style and energy, are still rolling in. Indeed to be wallowed in. Especially because the amazing success, some say, “the best in history” was so contrary to all expectation! Didn’t many friends and family plan to escape the cities with newly built soccer stadiums? Who wanted to be close when the hooligans took over, foreigners get mugged, traffic congestions and more road rage hit us?
Little did we know how the German’s example to create Fan parks with big screens and a Fan Mile would glue us all together. Who would have expected the regular soccer supporters would grow into a throng of new converts to this “gentleman’s game, played by hooligans”, as the saying goes? That this throng would swell with each game. As the word spread of the fun carnival atmosphere, without the dreaded, unruly behaviour, the Fanwalks on game days became entries into diaries.
For the first time in many years South Africans across the board had one single focus: A white ball with stripes, kicked and bumped by heads on a large green field.
While many of us never managed to reach the inside of a stadium, we planned schedules so as not to miss the couple of hours prior to kick-off, to imbibe the carnival spirit in streets, shopping malls and restaurants that shared their screens. Capetonians for the first time the last decade and a half took to walking in streets and using public transport again. Word had spread in the well-heeled suburbs that it was indeed “safe enough again”. It became the fun- and in-thing to do and say “I’ve done a train ride!” (with my purse still intact and my wristwatch still in place).
Fantasy took over on game days from 11 June to 11 July. Soccer had clearly released a collective sense of ‘lets have fun’ - Ayoba! The deep seated human need to find an escape in dressing up, as some facebook philosophers noted, was indulged. Costumes made from country flags from around the globe, headdresses in every shape and colour, frozen hairstyles, face and body paint ... you name it ... coloured the streets.
From the balcony on the fifth floor of my new city apartment, one block away from the Fanwalk, I spotted the merry throng on its 2.6 kilometre walk one later afternoon. Since my arrival in January in Cape Town, I was hesitant to show my ‘real’ camera on the street, scared to have it re-possessed... Now I grabbed my Canon and 70-200 m lens. There was a kind of electricity in the air. My mind was elsewhere than on caution in ‘crime ridden’ South Africa.
In front of the historical Parthenon-style on St Andrews square I saw stilt walkers in clown costumes like the ones I had once seen at Hampton Court near London. Indeed, the white crosses on red faces and on flags, wrapped around shoulders confirmed the English are here. The stilt walking giants not only balanced miles above us ordinary mortals, they danced. They swayed to the rhythms of a band that included violins, drums and the (in)famous Vuvuzela - that dreaded plastic hornlike instrument with its “B-Flat Moo”. To actually hear a tune in stead of merely the painful drone that has become synonymous with South African soccer.
The 70 - 200 m lens allowed me zooming in close on faces. But it also forced me often ‘running away’ from a subject that came too close too soon for focus. In between I dashed across the street to my apartment to fit the 17 - 35 wide angle for an overall shot of the crowds. This kind of shot necessitated a climb up the newly built pedestrian bridge over Buitengracht street. Mostly an ordinary task. Not so with 70 000 soccer enthusiasts pushing the opposite direction. As one collective body of ants. Then back home again to fit the more versatile 24-101 m lens for a couple of mid-distance portrait shots. And when dusk set in, I had my strobe in one hand, and trusted the wait of the camera with flash trigger on top to do its thing. I was secretly thankful for the past few week’s regular hikes up the 1000 meter of some of Table Mountain’s peaks. Camera work is not for the week and delicate! The extra bit of fitness since I came to live at the foot of this giant mountain range came in handy.
Now that the Vuvuzela-moan has died down, and the images downloaded on my new Applemacbook, what remains is the visual memory on my computer. And my steady getting to terms with new technology. Oh, Apple! Round and full of surprises as a soccer ball in South Africa of 2010.
About the Author
Bettie Coetzee-Lambrecht joined Travel Photographers Network late 2007 as a hesitant newcomer to photography and a complete novice to digital processing. The helpful comments of fellow TPN-ers, particularly inspiring Tom Guffey, funny and straightforward Lucy Llewellyn Byard and Sarah Clarehart with her handy photoshop tricks, have helped set her on a path that resulted in a successful first solo exhibition, The Flow of Stone at the Waterkant Gallery in Cape Town. She works as freelance arts writer, critic and travel writer/photographer for local media in South Africa. Her latest work is on view at a group exhibition of the Cape Town School of Photography.
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