Bafana is Dead – Long Live BaGhana!

South Africa has always been had the Big Five, but for the past month, we have also been proud to host the Big Six - the countries representing Africa in the World Cup, namely Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Bafana.

While there may have been a slight preference for our own boys, South Africans have proudly supported all African teams throughout the tournament – even Nigeria, who we normally really don’t like (whenever you watch a South African movie, you can be sure that the villain comes from Nigeria… so far, I’ve not managed to find out why!)

Unfortunately most of the African teams didn’t make it to the knockout stage of the tournament - only Ghana is still in the competition and so the whole continent is now focusing its attention on the Black Stars.

In South Africa, officials are distributing Ghanaian flags; all newspaper headlines are along the lines of “Ghana have to do it for Africa!” and “Support BaGhana BaGhana”; South Africa’s ruling party requested that the team change its nickname to “the Black Stars of Africa” and Vice President Thabo Mbeki encouraged all Africans to get behind Ghana, who “have to discharge the highly honourable and well‑deserved responsibility to represent Africa in the next stages of the tournament”.

To date no African team has made it to the semi finals of a World Cup and Ghana “with all of Africa behind them” have the chance to create history and achieve this on home grounds. That newspapers are constantly reporting that the “hopes of the whole continent are on the Ghanaian shoulders” is probably not helping to calm the players’ nerves either…– talk about pressure being on!

And while the historic opportunity of making it to the semi finals is a new experience for Africa , the feeling of such unity is a new experience for me. I have always known and felt that there is a strong sense of brotherhood within and among African nations, but the World Cup has proven that this wonderful feeling is one hundred per cent genuine – Africa is one big family and I have found it absolutely overwhelming how countries support, stick up and care for each other.

Can you picture European countries supporting each other like this in international tournaments? Can you imagine the Portuguese genuinely cheering for the Greece ? The English being proud of the Polish for making it to the next round? The Turkish upset that Belgium didn’t go through?

Africa may not yet have reached the economic standard and developmental status of European countries, but it is far ahead of us in other areas…


PS: Just when I had finished writing this post, I came across an article which claimed that once the tournament was over, there would be an outbreak of crime and xenophobic attacks would increase as South Africans fear that immigrants – mainly from Zimbabwe – take scarce jobs away from them. So much about one being one big family…