A few weeks ago, before England were knocked out of the World Cup and we all realized what a dull tournament the festival of football turned out to be, I was sat at a Nando's in Aston, where Craig (that will do for a name in the context of the anecdote) came to serve me:
Craig: "Are you familiar with the Nando's system?"
JPD: "Not really, could you remind me?"
Craig: "Nando's is a South African style piri-piri chicken restaurant. What you do is order your main course, drinks, side orders etc., ask how hot you would like it, and add your own piri-piri sauce"
JPD: "I always thought Nando's was Portuguese"
Craig: "Ahh, it's Portuguese-themed, South African styled"
Having finished my over-priced mildly spicy chicken in a bun, I naturally got thinking... Clearly Nando's HQ had seen there was a global football tournament on and sent a memo round along the lines of "it turns out our company was founded in South Africa: this is the kind of coincidence our forefathers prophesied, let's milk it for all its worth."
While it would be by no means beneath Flown the Coop to launch a 4000 word rant on the shameless opportunism of a north Birmingham chicken franchise, there is a bigger point here. The Nando's incident is indicative of a nationwide South African fetish which has gripped the nation from the moment it became profitable to market anything in relation to the World Cup. Everywhere you looked, smiling brown faces, footballs, and corporate logos joined forces to remind us just how great Africa is.
This great African love-in wasn't limited to restaurants, however. Mock the Week, the tried and tested barometer of which stand up comedian the BBC thinks it is worthwhile to promote in any given month, saw the appearance of Nik Rabinowitz, shipped in straight from Cape Town, to offer adroit musings on the week's current affairs. In the end, he gave a passable performance, generally consisting of shouted impersonations of Jacob Zuma which bore more than a passing resemblance to Gina Yahsere's shouted impersonations of her Nigerian War-Lord/ Grandfather.
It would be easy to pass this off as the standard fayre of any World Cup year, but somewhow this seemed different. 2006 didn't see a nation come together in praise of our great German comrades, Asda packaging special World Cup edition sauerkraut and frankfurters, nor documentaries about Germany's tumultuous history (although there are plenty going around). The obsession with South Africa goes deeper. It's part of a collective rebranding process: a way of rewriting Africa with the tricky bits left out. South Africa's problems are things of the past: the corruption, the crime, the racial strife, the AIDS epidemic aren't forgotten, but they have no place in 'new' Africa - a land where communitites rebuild themselves with smiles on their faces, where Cape Town's idyllic backdrop and not its violent underworld make the news and where Nelson Mandela can be rapturously wheeled around Soccer City as the nation's great black figurehead, while their current president's allegations of corruption go quietly unnoticed.
The World Cup being held in South Africa was a fantastic accomplishment for the continent of Africa and for the spread of football throughout the world. The danger is that as the West gives itself a collective pat on the back for a successful tournament and decides that Africa is nowhere near as bad as those Princess Diana landmine videos suggested, it ignores the very real problems the continent still faces. Around 22 million Africans live with AIDS, while corruption, economic exploitation and genocide are hallmarks of modern African history. The coverage of the World Cup hasn't made us forget this, but in its obsessive drive for signs of improvement and 'progress' in Africa, it risks doing something worse - consigning it to a virtual world of museums, documentaries and textbooks. Media coverage which has the potential to raise the profile of some of the major crises which face the human race runs the risk of achieving the opposite: enclosing them in the formaldehyde of earnest sound-bytes and video clips, while the watching world greedily consumes narratives of unity and betterment to the exotic sounds of African percussion and the blasts of vuvuzelas.
Nothing better illustrates this point than the misguided directive from the BBC to show that they are aware of South Africa's past and present plights. Instead of committed, in depth programming focussing on, say, malnutrition or the legacy of apartheid, we are given all-too-brief vignettes on townships and bite-size stories of families benefitting directly from Fifa's benevolent hands, sandwiched between Hansen and Shearer's hopelessly out-of-depth comments on Nelson Mandela's incarceration. Like hearing David Cameron choose R.E.M. and The Smiths as his desert island discs, or seeing Prince Harry enter the England team's dressing room, subjects close to our hearts feel instantly devalued and dirtied, so it is when South Africa's history is given the Mark Lawrenson analysis: apartheid becomes anecdote and crime is restricted to "places you wouldn't go after dark".
As it happened, the World Cup was a fairly average tournament: the best team won in a final against mediocre opponents; Rooney, Torres, Messi and Ronaldo were outshone by a 31 year old Uruguyan who was briefly the laughing stock of Old Trafford; and England were, once again, shit and refused to pick the necessary number of Spurs players required for a successful campaign. Now, as we slowly begin to realise this and attention turns towards the Premier League teams' pre-season campaigns, South Africa fades into the background too. The image we are left with is one of (justified) success for the country, but it is an image of success with the plight of thousands neatly cropped out.
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