I'd been told that, in Africa, football is a black peoples sport, and rugby is for the whites; but despite this, I wasn't prepared for the experience of last night. The game took place in the World Cup Stadium, with over 92,000 people attending the match. I'd say we saw about 5 white people who weren't with Warwick in Africa during the entire event.
We arrived early for kick off at 7.30pm, since getting in the stadium is no small feat. As the Alex group came with us there were around 25 people to try and herd into the stadium. As we queued to get into the car park, we were surrounded with busses full of avid fans, screaming, singing and, of course, playing vuvuzelas. Interestingly, these sound slightly less painful in real life than on TV, but still probably not my favorite instrument in history. South Africa is very different to England in terms of football, while we carefully separate our fans to avoid rioting; here, fans are free to mix as they wish. Often groups of friends will go to the game, supporting a mixture of teams. As Lewis explained, "We don't fight, we just laugh as each other."
After parking, we had to try and cross the bridge to the stadium grounds, which was when things began to get hectic, the huge crush of human beings squeezing onto the bridge quickly tore the group apart. My voice is currently gone, and yesterday I was only able to speak in whispers, I had no phone and was quite terrified of getting lost in the throng. I managed to cling to Thea to cross the bridge, but it was unpleasant, being pushed and shoved as everyone was herded together and into the stadium, while the mounted policemen cutting off anybody trying to take short cuts into the stadium. Once over the bridge, we went to find our gate. The group quickly became separated, as people were cut off from those ahead of them by the crowd. The feeling of being alone in a sea of people is always quite terrifying, but when you're totally out of your element, and cannot speak it is extremely unpleasant.
Having finally found the queue, we got to the front to find our tickets needed stamping, so we got back out of the queue and went back to the kiosk to try and resolve this. As the ticket collectors had torn some of them, we had a harrowing wait during which it would be unclear whether these would be stamped. Finally the issue was resolved, only for someone to snatch the final ticket from Lewis as it was being stamped. Lewis ended up sending us in with S'bu, but was only able to see small parts of the match himself.
Once inside, it was no better as we chased around looking for our seats. After rushing up and down stairs, and being hassled by various sketchy characters, including the guy who pushed infront of me, and slipped his hands into both of Natalie's coat pockets, before being gone so quickly that I hadn't even registered what I'd just seen - luckily all he got for his trouble was some dirty tissues. We had more trouble, with people going for the rather expensive cameras that some of the group had naively brought along on the night.
As most of our group had picked up either Pirates or Chiefs shirts, and as, let's face it, we stood out we got quite a lot of attention. For the most part it was enthusiasm, people wanting to know who we were supporting and where we were from. But some attention was nasty, aside from the attempts at theft, we had girls being pulled away from the group by men wanting to photograph them and the general melee made most of us, especially the girls quite uncomfortable.
The match itself was a lot more exciting to watch than I had expected, given that I'm not a particular lover of football. The atmosphere in the stadium was excited and happy, and after the Chiefs scored first, the Pirates (who I was supporting as the guy in front said I should) managed to equalize in about the 95th minute. The Pirates ended up winning the game on penalties - if you care for more info about the game I recommend googling it, as I am not capable of anything more exciting. The only uncomfortable moment was when a fight broke out between two guys a few rows down from us. The crowd around them managed to separate the two, and S'bu said it was probably alcohol fueled, but it was quite scary. The consequences of being a group of mostly white students in the middle of a football riot in South Africa don't really bear thinking about.
Getting out after the match was a little less harrowing, but I think we were still all grateful it was over. The match was a life experience, but not one I necessarily want to repeat.
Pete was absolutely invaluable all night, having tried to keep the group together, staying at the back to make sure no one was left behind and physically pushing one guy away as he went for a camera. He spent the whole night watching over everyone, especially the girls, with the sort of fierce protectiveness that I have never seen in anyone except for my brother. So on the off chance you read this - thank you so much again Pete, it meant so much to me, and all the others there.
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