Business Maverick, Media, Politics, Sport
The off-the-field media wrap up of the World Cup. Week Two.
Beware the vuvuzela, the World Cup will create more jobs, South Africa is a great candidate for the 2020 Olympic Games and other fairy stories related to Fifa’s soccer tournament our country won’t be winning.
The clever dicks at Netcare have given visitors to South Africa one more thing to worry about. They say vuvuzela’s are dangerous because they can spread germs and could rupture your windpipe if you blow them too hard. Perhaps the medical company’s spin doctors could have added a little more useful advice in their bid to capitalise on vuvuzela mania. If visitors don’t look both ways when crossing the road they could get run over, and if you lick someone else’s teaspoon after they’ve put it in their mouth you could catch their cold.
Read more: AFP
In other vuvuzela news KwaZulu-Natal’s Nazareth Baptist Church reached an out-of-court settlement with the trademark holder and maker of the popular, but irritating, plastic horns after claiming that the vuvuzela was originally invented in 1910 by the sect’s prophet, Isaiah Shembe. An iPhone app that replicates the buzz of that plastic horn called vuvuzela2010 hit the top of the iPhone charts in 50 countries. And a group called “The Voodoo Sellers” released a dance hit called “Blow That Vuvuzela” that will feature on iTunes. Ag shame, pity it’s nowhere near as sweet as “Blaas Jou Vuvuzela” by Die Radio Kalahari Orkes and Jack Parow featuring Rian Malan.
South Africa’s due for a new national coach and this will be announced after the World Cup. KickOff magazine reports that Carlos Alberto Parreira knows who’s going to succeed him, that the new coach is South African and that in his opinion it’s a “very good appointment”.
Read more: KickOff.com
Hawkers have experienced the slings and arrows of outrageous football fortune. Street sellers of flags were making a killing until Bafana Bafana bust their business by failing to go through to the next round. Some hawkers are so distraught they’re even considering giving their flags away for free, while local cars still fly what are by now tattered ribbons, but they’re our ribbons.
Read more: TimesLive
Les Bleus arrived home in France where they received a chilly welcome after causing a “national scandal” with their blubbing, threats of a strike and dropping out of the World Cup. The team landed at a small airport under heavy guard and have, predictably, been keeping a low profile. The French media were brutal and called the team’s performance “pitiful, shameful and ridiculous”. It’s unknown if les Bleus burst into tears on reading these reports.
Read more: CNN, The Wall Street Journal
Jacob Zuma told Reuters that the World Cup would create more jobs. This, as Statistics South Africa’s latest quarterly employment statistics showed, was not quite accurate. Employment in the formal sector dropped by 1% or 79 000 formerly employed people. Zuma also said that the country’s staging of the 2010 Soccer World Cup indicated South Africa should be considered a candidate for hosting the 2020 Olympic Games. Fortunately he stopped just short of saying that pigs could fly.
Read more: Reuters, Engineering News, LA Times
Newsweek reports that Fifa botched the World Cup with ridiculous hotel and ticketing schemes and a sweetheart deal for Sepp Blatter’s nephew. The magazine said: “Visitors can thank Fifa president Sepp Blatter for a raft of unprecedented screw-ups.” It added that many foreigners didn’t even bother to get on a plane after booking tickets because accommodation prices were so exorbitant. “Blatter, a Swiss moneyman who draws corruption allegations like a Chicago poll, oversaw several boneheaded decisions in the run-up to the tournament,” said Newsweek.
Read more: Newsweek
The New York Times said Sepp Blatter sounds as if he’s speaking mumbo jumbo when he’s talking technology. Blatter recently said Fifa was against technology because it would be a passion killer for the game of soccer. Reuters earlier quoted Blatter saying: “When you are in a football match there is no social level, everybody is the same and everybody in the stadium and at their television is an expert. Everybody is an expert and that is why we are not going into technology on the field of play, because if you have technology on the field of play, then there are no more experts.” Yup – that’s some mumbo jumbo all right.
Read more: New York Times, Reuters
By Mandy de Waal
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