The Guardian’s new man in Africa, David Smith on the South African elections:
“Where the English have football, South Africans have politics. This occurred to me as I stood a short distance from the stadium where South Africa will host next year’s World Cup final. A hundred or so people were gathered in a spontaneous outpouring of joy at their team’s victory. They wore the team shirts and hats, waved its flags and banners, and chanted its familiar anthems. The team was the African National Congress and it had just won its fourth consecutive championship.”
Read the rest of the article here.
Related deployments:
Smith focuses on the positive in the resemblance of SA politics to football culture; the negative is that, as with supporting a certain team, people tend to stay with a party simply because they have always done so. Its failings are rationalised and minimised in the face of contrary evidence.