25th June 2010

In Durban, Portugal played Brazil and the game ended without any of the teams scoring. The draw meant that the African team of the Ivory Coast had no chance of sneaking through to the second round of the tournament.

The Ivory Coast played their game at Nelspruit in Mpumalanga province. The game ended in favour of the Ivory Coast 3 nil. This game then accounted for the fifth African team to exit the tournament. Ghana stood alone as the only African team to proceed to the round of 16 playoffs.

The Nelspruit stadium is the stadium with the African design theme and very distinctive colours of the stadium seats. The external pillars are shaped in the form of giraffes. The seats are arranged in colours and patterns resembling the zebra. The province had outdone itself in providing this splendid stadium in time. The end result shall undoubtedly be carried in the minds of all those who attended games at this stadium.

In Pretoria, Chile was defeated by Spain 2-1 and in Bloemfontein Switzerland and the Honduras drew without scoring in their game. This time around, Switzerland was not as fortunate as they were in causing the upset of the tournament by beating Spain at the Durban stadium earlier in the tournament.    

The 2010 World Cup has spawned two distinctive allied industries this time around. The toy industry has benefitted from the manufacture of vuvuzelas. The craze has caught on especially amongst the foreigners who are often seeing buying the custom made ones from expensive stores. The numbers of vuvuzelas on the streets are phenomenal. Many other sporting codes are wary of the vuvuzela craze that has swept this World Cup. The organisers at this year’s Wimbledon tournament have firmly banned the instrument. The same reaction has come from the organisers of the forthcoming rugby World Cup to be staged in New Zealand next year.

The other manufacturing industry that has benefitted from this World Cup is the makers of the locally produced supporter’s hat called the makarapa here. The origin of the term makarapa is from the singular word lekarapa which means scraper. The hard hats worn by miners in South African mines were given this name. The hats were associated with miners returning to the rural areas during their vacations after scraping an existence in the urban mining areas of South Africa.  The term was carried over to the supporters that donned modified versions of the hard mining or construction hats.

The team’s emblem or any other colourful attachments are added to the hats.  Many of the hats are handmade and have exclusive designs. I have noticed that these hats have been widely adopted by the tourists, many wearing distinctive designs of their national teams. A very recent innovation has been the addition of a vuvuzela onto the makarapa.

The World Cup has also been good for the retail trade in flags and clothing apparel associated with the participating teams. Large sunglasses without any lenses are also distinctive in this World Cup. These are just some of the associated spinoffs for hosting the largest sports event in the World.