Port Elizabeth: learning to swear in Greek

Today I am Greek. All five of us walking down the hill towards the Indian Ocean and the Port Elizabeth stadium are Greek. Nikos is Greek because he is Greek. Dan, who is wearing a specially made makarapa in Greek colours, flying Greek flags and giving us all a lesson in the art of Greek cursing, is Greek after spending five years in Athens and finding his spiritual home there. Paul is Zimbabwean but he too is Greek today—Dan has forced him into a Greek football shirt. On the plane, Gregory and I had pondered the question aloud: are we supporting South Korea or Greece? We were told in no uncertain terms by the Greeks on board that we were supporting Greece. I settle for a scarf: all I can do to stop Dan making me put on a Greek shirt.

The scarf feels good. I’ve taken sides. I can’t bear to go to a game and not to have taken sides. Even on the few occasions I have failed to, I always end up doing so once I get there. Can anyone really watch a game of football and be indifferent? Perhaps, but for me you’re just not playing if you try to be neutral. There’s little rhyme or reason to my choices. Today I am Greek because of personal connections, this afternoon I will be Nigerian, just because I want an African team to do well, and this evening I will be English.

We wind our way down to the coast and through the wide boulevards’ gated middle-class houses, which give way to an old industrial zone still populated by a coloured working class: factories, workshops and warehouses out of 1950s England. The streets are not quiet empty, but there’s no sense of a gathering crowd. There’s barely any noise on the wind. The undulating roof of fine white metal mesh over Nelson Mandela stadium is set in acres of unsculpted land, a levelled bombsite redeveloped only at its centre. The streets around it have been closed to traffic; the roads are criss-crossed with gigantic barriers and mesh fences. A few folk have opened up temporary kiosks at their living room window, but until we get to the entrance gates it feels like we are almost alone.

Paul, schooled in the tough world of community organising and opposition politics in Zimbabwe, is a negotiator for—and organiser of—the Port Elizabeth street traders and hawkers. The story here is the same as almost every municipality. Fifa demand that a huge area around stadiums be free of independent commerce and advertising hoardings; the local authorities complied. Street traders, who like many South Africans thought that they might get a few crumbs from the World Cup table, started to protest. Concessions were mooted, alternatives floated, meetings planned, but decisions were never made, and when the Cup finally arrived it was made clear that in Port Elizabeth, there would be no space for the informal economy that sustains perhaps a quarter of the country’s households.

We shrug our shoulders. Inside, the stadium feels freshly minted. Its long ramps to the high seats afford amazing views of the ocean, but with just a minute before the kick off there’s no time to pause. We rush in and sit down. At last, time for a game.

It’s not a good day to be Greek. Within a few minutes, South Korea have scored and Greece look like the worst team of the tournament so far. Nothing that happens in the game dissuades us of this. The two or three thousand Greek fans remain remarkably sullen. The group in front of us, draped in flags, do not lift their chins from their hands for the whole 45 minutes. In the grimmer patches of Greek play I take in the spectacle—the place is two-thirds full and almost every single corporate box is empty—looks like the sponsors didn’t think Port Elizabeth was going to earn them any kudos with their friends.

By contrast the Koreans, who include South African Koreans, American Koreans and Korean Koreans, are animated, organised and loud. For the first time at this World Cup, something takes on the vuvuzelas. Their percussion, plastic hand clapping machines and chants match and sometimes exceed the diminished vuvuzela presence. In fact, when the Koreans really get going, the vuvuezals seem to join in like a vast plastic horn section.

I join the main body of Greek fans for the second half and pleasingly, all of Fifa’s regulations have disintegrated in their section. Seat numbers have been abandoned, everyone is standing on the chairs, and of course everyone is smoking. When South Korea gets a second goal some hold their heads in their hands, but most turn to cursing, first the whole team, and then they train their fire on a number of individual players. This turns out to be an extraordinary lesson in Greek vocabulary as almost of their calls involve some kind of unusual sexual act, performed by or on the players, possibly involving relatives, and usually entailing humiliation.

After the game, the crowd disperses in a flash. There’s no reason to linger. This vast and expensive stadium, plonked so artlessly here, is only able to sustain public use and focus for perhaps four hours. When we head into town, we are now all Nigerians, expect the hardcore Greeks who are hoping the Argentineans will freak the Nigerians out so much that Greece could have a chance against them. We hang out with Port Elizabeth’s Zimbawean exile and migrant posse, we hop from bar to bar near the city centre, there’s not another Greek or Korean or Nigerian in sight. We are on the losing side again.

The day is coming to an end and we are about to leave town to watch England at a friend’s house. At a big sports bar we grab some food and step into another country. No one is watching the football. The place is packed, but all eyes are tuned to South Africa playing rugby and the test cricket on the big screens. We get put in a side room and have to ask them to put the football on; only after we have endured the golf channel do they finally find it. The crowd at Rustenberg comes onto the screen, the camera panning along the St George banners—Barrow in Furness, Daventry, Taunton, Telford—the comforting, familiar litany of provincial England on tour. Thirty minutes to kick off, and though I’m not feeling too hopeful, I’m feeling home. I’m English.