Destination: South Africa

Photo by Anjali Nayar

Johannesburg, South Africa.

I boarded the Park and Ride bus with hoards of other game-goers. Half-drunk Brazilians were already singing rounds of patriotic tunes, rocking back and fourth in their yellow garb, their face paint smudged and eyes blurry.

I didn't join in. Ship sinking, UN Security Council warnings and rash violations of human welfare aside, I opted to cheer for North Korea, or as FIFA calls it Korea DPR.

I want Côte d'Ivoire (and all other African teams here) to make it out of the group round, so both Brazil and Portugal must go down.

As a result, I dressed up in my circa 1980s retro red Adidas jumpsuit (that someone had given me in Cameroon), and cheered on the country of the Dear Leader.

When I got to the stadium, everything turned to chaos. A huge colourful and fire-hazard worthy crowd had amassed outside the stadium, as police officers struggled to keep up with the flow of ticket holders running in off the street.  You can see all of my pictures here. 

We waited for more than 30 minutes outside in the near-freezing weather before the lines finally started moving. When I got closer, I noticed that the officers had given up on security checks.

The World Cup's security staff has been on strike over low pay. The police have since taken over the duty, but obviously the transition is still in its early days. Even in my bright red jumpsuit, I streamed right through.

The stadium was a collage of yellow, green and blue. Obviously Brazil is popular, but I think the team might have benefited from both (a) being the same colour as Bafana Bafana (many people were just wearing the team's yellow jersey) and (b) the freezing weather, which forced most people, even me -- a North Korean supporter -- to buy a Brazil hat and scarf combo from the vendors outside the stadium.

Bright lights

The stadium experience was quite jarring for me, actually. At first, I was in awe of the neatly cut grass, the bright lights and the masses of people. It was a far cry from the dusty fields I had visited and played on for the last couple months.

But the novelty soon faded and all of a sudden it was too much. The speakers too loud. The people too many. The costumes too garish.

Each time the automated cameras swooped overhead, fans toppled over one another screaming, hoping to appear on camera. Strange, I thought. When I saw it on television, I always thought they were celebrating throughout.

Several people had political or humorous slogans drafted on posters - again tilted just so, for the cameras.

"The Dear Leader thinks I'm at work!" screamed one poster.

Big Brother is watching

Down by the field, as the teams entered the stadium, the photographers were cordoned off with a rope - a big lasso preventing them from charging the players like paparazzi.

After the anthem, the press scuttled like cockroaches to their tiny seats along the sidelines. They bulged around the seats with their big lenses and bigger bellies.

At that point, one of the cameras swooped over me. It was like a Big Brother fly-by straight out of George Orwell's novel 1984. The camera beamed at me, urging me to parade my affection for North Korea. I didn't move. I took a picture of it instead.

It was strange because I had spent months finding and following people's genuine love of the World Cup and soccer across the continent. But when I actually got there, when I actually sat in that stadium of bright lights, I felt like the game lost its soul, its passion.

Fans seemed more interested in the lenses pointed at them than the play on the field. In front of me, people variously broke out in Shakira's Waka Waka, the World Cup song instated by FIFA, or Coca Cola's K'naan dilute, Wavin' Flag.

I couldn't hear anything else across the stadium, but for the parps (mouth farts) of the vuvuzelas, big, small and every size between. Unfortunately, in the stadium you can't tune them out like you can on television.

In the coming days, I was looking forward to hearing Côte d'Ivoire's Elephant Mummies sing and dance their Zulu numbers, and Ngando's chants for Cameroon. But because of these horns, unless I'm sitting on their laps, I'm likely to miss it.

The vuvuzelas, branded miner helmets, diski dance, and pretty much everything else on display in that stadium was pushed by FIFA and Brand South Africa it seems. And we all lapped it up.

Meanwhile, FIFA is out on a quest to make sure that no-one else makes any money off the games - suing Dutch girls for so-called ambush marketing, otherwise known as wearing orange miniskirts to games, lest it help publicize a brand of beer.

Steve Bloomfield, who has written a book about soccer in Africa, has written about the issue here. It's a great blog, check it out.

A couple hours later, despite a great goal by North Korea in the dying moments of the game, I left pretty disappointed.

That day, in that stadium, soccer lost its soul -- it was like an Al Green classic diluted into a Britney Spears anthem -- just with more glitter and parps.

Up Next: I venture to South Africa's jail system to watch a game in prison with 30 rowdy offenders. And soccer regains its soul when I meet with the Super Fans.

As always, check out my twitter feed: www.twitter.com/anjalinayar