World Cup drunk

I have all the symptoms of a post-World Cup hangover. It has that usual mix of emotion that accompanies the morning after the best debaucheries. But this time around it's epic. There is a little guilt, perhaps for having splurged too much, but there is also a sense of victory, the kind that you reminisce about before falling asleep at night. “We did it”, I quietly murmur to myself. But as I lie in bed reminiscing every epic second, location, face and romance (because broken hearts tend to follow me) I realize how intoxicating these last few weeks have been and how nauseous I now feel. I was World Cup drunk. I was dizzy about football and dizzy about what football had achieved in a nation as deeply divided as South Africa. We all soaked in its euphoria and its power to unify, and in the sight and sounds of desegregated stadiums and trains, buses and fan parks trembling with an omniscient “shosholoza”. It was extraordinary. However, many warned that it was too good to be true. That it couldn't possibly be real and they may very well have been right. But I on the other hand, had no intention on letting these boring realist spoil my World Cup drunk. And whilst skeptics clung to their guns, criticizing FIFA's profit and motives, as well as its pragmatism –I road the wave of excitement along with the thousands in Soccer City, Moses Mabhida, Loftus, Free State, Peter Mokaba and Ellis Park. It was all extremely enticing, perhaps, infectiously irrational. The spectacle took over my senses, my vital organs pulsed with the rhythm of the thundering crowd. My blood boiled. And in its midst the spectacle suddenly seized being real. Something dreamy had taken over. Our eyes all mirrorishly wide. The athletes turned super citizens. We hailed them triumphantly, like gods convening on Mount Olympus. In the glitter was something heroish about these godly bodies, virile and healthy. I suppose, that these are the bodies that we imagine great nations are made of. Everything about this spectacle was everything but real. A psychosis at best. The realist were right. FIFA's critics were right. But they had missed the point. The World Cup seized to be 'real' long before the stadiums, fan parks and airports rumbled. Perhaps, even before FIFA announced that South Africa would host the epic event. The event is fraught with symbolic capital, its athletes, stadiums and supporters congeal something far in excess of football. But FIFA not only knew this they banked on it, certainly FIFA's critics would not have been so naive. FIFA was not merely in the business of selling football to South Africans, that is to say, in a country where rugby and cricket take precedence. It was selling a dreamy nationalist product to the world, that of course, would have to be first, re-sold to its grassroots, but if successful, FIFA would earn record profit. And so was packaged Rainbow Nation 1.1 –economically stronger, democratic and more accountable than its predecessor. In what I hail as the most ingenious marketing campaign of this century, FIFA bought a brutishly divided South Africa so as to sell to South Africans, as well as the world a moral imaginary. And though a clever tactic South Africans will find it bares a hallmark reminiscent of the 1994, NP and ANC brokering that sold to the international community, Nelson Mandela and Rainbow Nation 1.0. FIFA on the other hand is reluctant to answer any claims of meddling in post colonial spin to sell its sport. It would rather allow its official slogan “Celebrating Africa's Humanity” fill in the gaps.
My objective is not to take sides per-se, nor to recoil FIFA's excessive monopoly and earnings, or government's pragmatism. The critics will always be right. What I am trying to suggest is that though national imaginaries and spectacles such as the World Cup have their sobering limitations, and they are quite stark, severe unemployment, housing shortages, medial education, violent crime and racialism are urgent areas of 'real' need in post apartheid South Africa. On the other hand, national imaginaries have a key role in transformation and reconciliation. And as I have witness it can inspire a charismatic and distinct South African identity. The Rainbow Nation is not something we can hold in our hands, it's an idea that occupies a very powerful and potentially transformative space in the psyche of millions of South Africans and now, perhaps in the 2 billion that tuned in to watch. And if just for one second in the madness of it all it has unified us the slightest, than it achieved its purpose. I am convinced that codified in the roaring vuvuzelas and the chanting hides a message not drunk in euphoria, but painstakingly sober: “we can become better than what we are.” I was drunk and riding the wave... where were you?

W.