JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — When Emma Jordi's mother suggested a Sunday afternoon at South Africa's Confederations Cup watching the national soccer team play Iraq, the pretty blond 14-year-old had an excuse. Homework.
"I have to write a speech for English," she said warily, more accustomed to riding her beautiful chestnut gelding, Spring Close Prince Dante, than spending rowdy afternoons at the soccer stadium, the air rent by the blasts of plastic trumpets called vuvuzelas that fans blow.
South Africa's team, Bafana Bafana (The Boys the Boys) may be mediocre at best. And soccer may still be perceived by some white South Africans as a blacks' game, second to rugby, the sport that whites tend to play and watch.
But Jane Jordi, the mom, was determined to take her family, which is white, to support Bafana Bafana in the FIFA Confederations Cup, widely seen as a dry run for South Africa's hosting of the World Cup next year.
"It was a South African event, so it was that patriotic feeling that was the original thing," said Jordi, who is "not a soccer person" but bought tickets months ago. "I just like watching the play and the crowd interaction. I wanted to go for the game and for the atmosphere, so I bought the cheapest tickets because I wanted to be with the ordinary South Africans. We had a huge amount of fun."
Soccer tends to be more fraught with controversy than any other South African sport. Partly it's the racial undercurrents in a country where divisions persist 15 years after the first democratic elections ushered in black majority rule. And partly it's the persistent doubters, who claim South Africa's World Cup will be either a flop or a disaster.
Bafana Bafana's lackluster performance doesn't help, nor does its members' habit of demanding big bonuses on the eve of important matches, as they did recently. In one online poll about whether the team would make it to the semifinals, nearly 60% gave it no chance. Just 6%, the hard-core supporters, expect it to win the final.
On Wednesday, South Africa was able to pull off a victory, beating New Zealand, 2-0. A good thing too: After Sunday's 0-0 draw against Iraq, sportswriter Nkareng Matshe had written of the New Zealand game in Tuesday's Star newspaper that "defeat, or even another draw, would be a national catastrophe."
