Africa's World Cup: Critical Reflections on Play, Patriotism, Spectatorship, and Space

Screaming U-S-A! (and Other Imagined Things): Us versus Them at South Africa 2010

148 Screaming u-S-A! (and other Imagined Things) Us versus Them at South Africa 2010 ANdReW m. gueST TheRe Should hAve beeN something discordant about finding oneself in semirural South Africa surrounded by jolly mobs of drunken Americans wearing Uncle Sam top hats complemented by sequined red, white, and blue tuxedos screaming “U-S-A” on an endless repeat. Without the proper context, it might well have been a cartoon satire on neoimperialism. Yet amid the dusty blocks of modest homes and taverns outside the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg for the United States–England World Cup game on June 12, 2010, it seemed just right. In fact, on that day, all the ultimately bizarre claims of nationalism somehow made sense: the American fan as a cartoonish Uncle Sam; the English fan as an aging knight in shining armor; the South African fan as a good-natured host blowing a horn and wearing a funny hat. It was an eclectic mashup of global identities of the sort that perhaps only a World Cup can supply. For a short while, it was intense and absorbing—good, silly fun. That short while, however, was a long time coming. As a professional academic and soccer blogger with two years of Peace Corps service in Malawi and a long-standing interest in Africa, I was thrilled to have made it back for the first African World Cup. As an American soccer fan, I worried that Team USA could be in for a thrashing, but I hoped that the English would, as usual, disappoint. As a whole, when I joined the throngs of fans earlier that day shuttling by minibus from Screaming U-S-A! (and Other Imagined Things) • 149 accommodations in the greater Johannesburg-Pretoria metropolis to the outskirts of Rustenburg, I felt engrossed in the peculiar excitement of a grand game. We arrived in Rustenburg hours early, descending like a thirsty, good-natured hive of locusts onto the neighborhood around the stadium , an area on the poor side of working class without being destitute. We trampled about through dirt yards and improvised taverns full of entrepreneurial locals inviting us to eat, drink, and spend. The English congregated with their patriotic football songs and St. George’s Cross, the Americans countered with stars, stripes, and loud staccato “U-S-A” chants. As an American, I wished desperately for more creativity, but I also found myself joining in periodically just to get in the spirit of things. The wide-eyed local children peering around fence posts and piles of bricks seemed to expect nothing less. Once inside the stadium, nationalist spirit came to a crescendo with the singing of the national anthems. With the players swaying stoically in line, carefully uniformed in national colors and brands, the crowd immersed itself in “God Save the Queen” (“Send her victorious / Happy and glorious”) and the “Star-Spangled Banner” (“The bombs bursting in air / Gave proof through the night / That our flag was still there”). The game itself was anticlimactic. An early positional error by the American defense led to an easy English goal. A slapstick mishandle by the English goalkeeper gifted the United States an equalizer. The rest of the game was mostly sound and fury, signifying nothing. On the way out of the stadium, the feeling was of civil resignation, but the scene was utter confusion—the roads were a stagnant cluster of idle buses, eager hawkers, and perplexed fans. I was lucky to find my minibus shuttle after a long, lonely walk, but we were stalled against a dusty curb and a row of jacaranda trees. In the traffic and disorder, our driver seemed reasonably content to smoke and listen to radio reports of a Springbok rugby friendly from earlier in the day. He perked up when a pair of viscerally drunk American fans stumbled to his window looking for a ride to the Johannesburg airport: “500 rand [70 dollars]. Each.” The rest of us had paid something like half of that for the round trip, but the two consulted only briefly before jumping in without bothering to negotiate. One of the Americans immediately passed out in his bench back seat. The other immediately began blathering to anyone who would 150 • AFRICA’S WoRld CuP listen—first about the game, then into an extended discourse about himself. He was excited to realize that several of the guys on the minibus were English...