5 Aug 2010(Thu)

During the recent series of special Football Japan Minutecast features recorded in South Africa, I spoke with Nylon Mphahlele – chairman of the supporters’ club (Greater Johannesburg branch) at Kaizer Chiefs, one of the most popular professional football teams in the country. Speaking shortly before the 2010 World Cup final at Soccer City, Nylon told me about the experience of a World Cup in his own country; how overseas fans took to cuisine such as pap and boerewors; and how the domestic Premier Soccer League might be affected when things return to normal.

 

 

As such a prominent supporter of domestic football in South Africa, what has it meant to you to have the World Cup here in your country?

 

I feel very fortunate to witness this – it is a very big opportunity for me to see this happen in my own country. The whole of Africa has never hosted this kind of tournament before, so I am so happy. I have enjoyed it very much. I went to one match at FNB Stadium (Soccer City), which was Argentina versus Mexico. The score was 3-1 and the game was so nice.

 

During the matches at Ellis Park – the other Johannesburg stadium – you have been working on a stall outside selling South African food like steak and boerewors. How have you enjoyed cooking for customers from around the world?

 

It was fantastic because you experience, you learn, and you see what kinds of foods they like. But unfortunately, we didn’t make so much money. Why? Because you can’t really do something that we have never done before. We are just selling what we can and what we have. So a lot of people would just come and look at what we were selling. Some of them were taking photos and asking about things like pap, which is part of our culture and what we are eating here in South Africa. So they just looked at it – some of them wanted to taste it, but some of them just said no. But it was still very good.

 

I heard that FIFA told you what prices to charge for all the food, even though you were outside the actual stadium premises. Is that true?

 

Yes. They told us that we must have a standard price for the boerewors rolls, for pap and steak, and stuff like that, because they said that people might want to overcharge or even charge less. But I think most people were expecting too much from foreign visitors, because they thought maybe they’ve got a lot of money. So FIFA came along with their standard price and said ‘no, you must charge this price’.

 

Moving back to on-the-field matters, how do you think this experience of hosting the World Cup will affect the Premier Soccer league and domestic football in South Africa afterwards?

 

I think that we’re now going to see a very different kind of soccer again, because we’ve just spent a month watching international soccer. Especially European football is not the same as our South African football. We are now going back to our slow build-ups – they are dilly-dallying a lot with the ball, and not passing as quickly as the Europeans. I don’t think it’s going to change anything, because we still have the same coaches and the same players. There is not a lot that is going to have changed so much now. But I think the players will have learned a lot from seeing this in their own country, so maybe they can do something much better in future.

 

How about the fans? After such masses of people came out in support of Bafana Bafana, do you think there will be more fans to watch the Premier Soccer League matches?

 

The way I look at things, if Manchester United could come next after the World Cup – maybe two days after the final – you would see a lot of people who want to watch them against whichever team they are playing. But coming to domestic football, I am disappointed with Indian South Africans, because they are based in South Africa but they like Manchester United more than other teams in this country. They don’t support our local football at all. The very same people who came to our soccer before the World Cup are still going to attend, but maybe only a few of these others are going to support their local soccer teams. We’ll just have to see what happens after the World Cup.