On the road to Bloemfontein, a birthday party in the desert

Yellow cards collected during the group stages of the World Cup are cancelled when it comes to the knock-out stages, so too were my responses to England’s opening games. I decided to expunge the memory of those performances from my mind. I bought a beaded vuvuzela in England colours and I was determined to spend the long drive from Cape Town having positive and optimistic thoughts.

When I say long drive, I mean very long drive; over 1000km first, through the winelands of the Western Cape, and then into the long expanse of the Karoo desert. Take a look at the World Cup maps which show where the stadiums are located. You’ll see three on the southern coast: Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban, and then a cluster around Johannesburg, reaching out to Bloemfontein, Rustenburg and Polokwane–the huge empty zone between Cape Town and Bloemfontein is the Karoo.

We left the untidy fringes and unfinished new developments of the greater Cape Town sprawl behind us and took the tunnel under the huge ring of mountains that surround the city. The N1 freeway, and the old British-built railway alongside it, snaked their way across the valley bottoms, plains and plateaus of the desert. Serried ranks of tightly-wired vines stretched on either side of the road and between them you could glimpse the new informal shack cities to which thousands of Zimbabweans have found their way, taking desperately poorly-paid seasonal jobs on the farms.

It was winter now, and no one was in the fields. Neither the shacks, nor the older housing for coloured families that perch on the edge of every small town, have chimneys or stoves. In one place, where xenophobic riots saw the Zimbabweans camps attacked by locals, new barbed fencing had been installed to separate the communities.

On the outskirts of Paarl a South African flag had been picked out in coloured stones and below it the rocks read Ayoba 2010. It was the last sign of the World Cup we saw for over 600km. I tried to concentrate on England and their prospects; my host and I wondered who would play and how they would play, but suddenly released from the urban and tourist bubbles of the World Cup, the strange and marvellous landscape insistently demanded my attention. Great rolling waves of dark brown hill flanked us, the roads headed straight for the huge horizon between them, and all around the long blank plains of treeless scrub and bush enveloped us.

We arrived in Hanover, a few hours’ drive from Bloemfontein, and picked out one of the dusty old guest houses. Out host didn’t put on the satellite television, and with Uruguay vs South Korea on at four, we headed for the main drag – though that is an exaggeration. We had, as usual in South Africa, two choices, just metres from each other, but existing in parallel universes.

We could have gone to the shabeen that was next to the ramshackle collection of breezeblock houses and shacks that was Hannover’s township. The football would surely be on, but it was Saturday night, and that means get legless night; dirty drunk and drowned in alcohol night. So, if we went, then the price of entry was going to be a lot of attention and buying a lot of beer for a lot of folks. The other option was the main hotel. The lobby was decorated with various World Cup country flags, and even had the odd football banner from passing Germans, but when we walked into the bar a few minutes late for the kick off, it wasn’t Uruguay vs South Korea that was on, it was South Africa vs Italy–in the rugby.

There were a few folks watching the game, including a very large Afrikaans truck driver who was slightly befuddled that we wanted to watch the football, and even more befuddled when I pleaded for a coke instead of a beer. We watched the first half of the match in a gloomy and increasingly cold side room. As the sun goes down here, the temperature drops precipitously. At half time we returned to the bar. The rugby was over, the football was on and we settled down to watch it. A birthday party was starting up in another corner and the bar was soon full. My host and I were the only people watching the television. Not a single soul had any interest in the game. Every now and again, the truck driver, by now fantastically well oiled on cider, popped his head up. “It’s good ?“ he enquired. “Who's winning?” The score was on the screen but we let him know anyway. Uruguay are going to the quarter finals.

We headed back to the hotel for the Ghana vs USA game and disinterest had reached fever pitch. The temperature in the bar was pretty much the temperature outside: sub zero. Inside the birthday party, people were warming themselves on the beer and double-brandy chaser routine, truck driver had invited himself to a family’s table and was engaging the father in conversation, and when the game kicked off we were the only ones watching it. When Ghana scored in the opening minutes I was off my chair and screaming. From the back of the room came a mixture of boos and a few chants of “AFRIKA, AFRIKA”. One very drunken member of the birthday party interjected every few minutes “Pakistan, Pakistan” just to let us that he neither knew nor cared what was going on, and occasionally berated the barman: “Where’s the music Eddie, where’s the music?”

The game continued, more brandies were drunk, truck man was boring his captive audience senseless, the room filled with smoke and Eddie, to his credit, kept the match commentary on. By the end of the second half, with the score at 1-1 I was on the edge of my seat; the rest of the room – which had stopped drinking only to eat immense steaks – were slipping off the edge of their seats. Extra time. We didn’t care now. Ghana scored and I was stamping the floor and banging the bar and punching the air. The Swede called in on the final whistle and reminded me of the best homemade sign of the tournament , held up at Ghana’s opening game “ Ghana is here, can you feel the heat”. It was sub zero in the Karoo and this crowd was stone cold, but Africa had a team in the last eight and I, at any rate, was on fire.