Dear Vuvuzela Haters
Please read this letter with with an open mind and an open heart. The kind of open heart that welcomes you to South Africa and invites you to enjoy the wonderful football festival.
Instead of being distracted and indignant and rational about the Vuvuzela and how loud it is and how many decibels and the direct mathematical level of interference on the game, please, instead, ask a human question. Ask this : Why do south Africans blow the Vuvuzela? Why do they need to?
This is why: they blow the Vuvuzela to welcome you to their country, and in a voice as loud and as powerful as an elephant or lion. A little bird's welcome is not enough, so great is their excitement to see you arrive on their shores. They blow the vuvzela because the love in their hearts and the excitement in their voice cannot be contained in the restricted area of the chest cavity. It builds and builds and all their love and open heartedness comes booming out. They blow the Vuvzela because despite the heavy, heavy price that has been paid for freedom in South Africa, its people wake up and get out and walk with pride and hope and happiness and the fact that South Africa is what it is despite its dark, dark history is reason enough to blow the Vuvuzela from roof tops and mountain tops from sun rise til moon rise- and so we do.
Our traditions are louder and bigger and brasher than yours because our lives and deaths are louder and bigger and brasher than yours. Our lives and futures are often fought for on a daily basis in shanties and down mines and in HIV hospitals. Sometimes just being alive and seeing your loved ones here is worth a bolting blaring blast from a Vuvuzela.
Please don't belittle and dismiss the voice of our joy and our freedom- we have fought long and hard for it and we have all lost something along the way.
South Africa welcomes you and your wonderful traditions to Johannesburg and Soweto and Capetown, we welcome your drunken dancing and singing fans. We welcome your Mexican waves and risque football songs. We love football more than you can know. We don't play in grassy fields or stadiums, but in the streets of Soweto and the beaches of the Transkei. We make footballs from rolls of supermarket bags that you simply throw away, or wind reeds round and around until we are sure it will hold. Football is in our blood and we want to share this joy with you.
With all our love and open hearts and we hope you will open your heart to us too and the voice of our joy.
Vuvuzela players of South Africa
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6 comments:
Yup thats all very nice, but they are still freaking annoying and the guy who invented it used it as a weapon during soccer fights, he made it out of a metal pipe.
As your brother and a fellow ex-South African I couldn't agree more in the way you have portrayed the triumph of the South African people. What I'm about to say should not discount any of their hardships and achievements. I am moved by what I see in South Africa at the Football World Cup as it shows how the South African people have defied the odds of their painful heritage.
Yet I'm afraid the Vuvuzela doesn't do it for me. Its not a traditional horn. It was invented in the mid nineties by an (Afrikaans) South African Entrepreneur and the reason I believe its blown is because of a clever marketing ploy by those that wanted these things to fly off the shelves. Its also appealing to the people of South Africa because it makes a mind-blowingly overpowering sound not because it tells a story of the triumph over a very unfortunate history.
John Qwelane, a black Sports Journalist called for it to be banned in 2005 http://bit.ly/dCg1WY saying "Ban it before it makes us appear like a bunch of clowns in 2010."
I think this blogpost helps the Worldcup supporters appreciate the miracle that is South Africa, and if its this debate that spurred people into reading your account, then I admit the Vuvuzela may have a purpose ;-)
ViVa Vuvuzela!!! Viva Fionaji!!
well no one seems to be able to agree on who "invented" the vuvzela and it doesn't matter as it isn't in the least bit relevant! I also think it is very important not to racialise the issue by drawing attention to"black journalists" and "Afriakans" inventors. All S Africans are out in force with their vuvu's celebrating and whether the tradition is 10 years old or 500 it is still utterly synonymous with the game as played in S Africa and i think the generous thing to do is to let people enjoy themselves for 3 weeks - Africa has endured European traditions for centuries as various colonials passed through, 3 weeks is nothing by comparison. If its that offensive what enterprising market hawkers are selling in JHB- "vuvu-stoppuhs" - earplugs! - but lets not ban them.
FYI - you are all in fact wrong and the Vuvu IS traditional- they were originally kudu horns and used to scare away lions and baboons form crops and live stock.
Better a Vuvuzela than a Knobkerrie.
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