Last Saturday, a rugby playoff match in South Africa was switched from the white suburbs of Pretoria to a stadium in Soweto. The move was required because the stadium in Pretoria was needed for the soccer World Cup. Organizers FIFA would not allow the pitch to be turned into a swamp by hard running rugby players. So the truth is the game and the white fans would not have gone to Soweto for the match if the venue change was not required. Not surprisingly, everything went of well and thousands of white fans were ferried to Soweto for the match. Some fans did take their reprehensible views with them to Soweto. For an example, see in this New York Times video at the 0:53 mark. Then most of them went home again.
Anyway, if you read and watch the news, you’d thought something else happened.
Apparently the anchor of the South African TV news station, ETV, announced after the match: “Nelson Mandela’s dream of a nonracial South Africa was starting to be realized.” For real. The New York Times announced on its front page this morning: “Rugby Helps Bridge South Africa’s Racial Divide.” The 1995 Rugby World Cup is being evoked. You know the bollocks story about how rugby then united “the nation.” Invictus gets inserted into reports again. Like in 1995 and when the movie came out, Nelson Mandela’s name gets thrown around indiscriminately.
The correspondent of the Canadian Globe and Mail writes: “Rugby conquers racism.” What? Even the normally level-headed and perceptive Guardian correspondent, David Smith got swept up by this chimera. (Smith even made a false equivalence between race in rugby as well as in football.)
This is what I find so infuriating about South Africa’s media (and often the ‘foreign correspondents’) reporting about it.
Whites get special prizes for occasionally doing very ordinary things. And for doing it way pass its sell by date. Black people never do anything for the “rainbow.” Of course, this is all easier than all the hard work needed to transform South Africa. (BTW, an important side issue is that the World Cup stadiums will be used by rugby teams once the tournament is over.)
And what is even worse are the mood swings exposed by this kind of reporting. As a friend of mine–a very senior South African journalist–opined:
“… When ET [Eugene Terreblanche] was killed we were told SA [South Africa] was on the verge of a race war, now we told Madiba’s [that's Nelson Mandela] dream of a rainbow nation is back on track cause white people went to Soweto to play rugby!”
Bipolar.
– Sean Jacobs
Bipolar is the word.
The NYT article is naive and oversimplifying, certainly, but as I read it the roles are quite reversed: the blacks are presented as infinitely good “magical negroes”, graciously accepting the whites into their home, while the whites are the basically-good-but-naive bumblers who by chance more than anything stumble onto the blacks’ humanity. Still a shit article, mind.
I’m not necessarily saying otherwise, but how are you so sure what happened in Soweto the last two weekends? Were you there?
If the people involved–that is the rugby supporters and Soweto residents–see it as racial reconciliation, and from various articles I’ve read and the people I’ve talked to it seems some do–isn’t it?
Even if it’s a few, that’s better than none. It may not be a reason to bandy about Madiba’s name but it’s a (possibly small) step forward.
Yes, there’s a lot wrong with the media portrayal of SA from both local and foreign outlets but I also don’t see the need to react negatively to something that is potentially positive. By which I mean, condemn the media all you’d like, but why insist that something positive couldn’t have come from the event?
And Birdseed is right–I’m not seeing where you get your interpretation of the NYT article.
yes, the media articles on SA are invariably rubbish- see emma hurd on sky news for eg and the mindless nonsense…but I still think we give the actual ‘event’ too much bad press…the people in vilakazi street seemed happy enough for the business…so in my view, as someone wrote in business day last week, heck, he just had a lekker time. sometimes life is that simple- without trying to over-simplify SA…we all know what the challenges are and are under no illusions..but it was a good game- nothing’s perfect, least of all here and duality and complexity are part of what and who we are. and so we live here and deal with it, imperfectly but there you go.
Judith
and another thought- has anyone asked the people of soweto what they thought? I feel tired of people speaking on behalf of them actually. we have no idea what they thought about it..
I see where you are coming from, and there was certainly an amount of hyperbole in the coverage of the match. However, I think you underestimate the symbolic overtones of the event. For the Bulls – that most white and Afrikaans of sporting institutions – to play in Soweto is truly something special. And for white people to actually go to a township is almost unheard of in my country; and that they came back with their lives and wallets intact would have been a surprise to many cloistered white South Africans. It is a small barrier that has been broken, and should be celebrated as such.
I hear what you are saying, it’s hardly rocket science for a bunch of whities to go to a township to watch a rugby game. I agree, white South Africans make almost no effort in the Rainbow nation, it mostly comes from non-whites.
Why? Because white people are scared. Of retribution, of anger, or just of leaving their comfort zone.
That said, you seem so angry and cynical. It may be lame but any step in the right direction is something and in South Africa where everything is still so blatantly black and white, my fellow whities need something obvious like a dot-to-dot to guide them along!