More than vuvuzelas? Towards an understanding of soccer fandom in Johannesburg

† This paper acknowledges the artificial and ambiguous nature of apartheid racial categorization but employs the racial terminology commonly used by the respondents: black, white, coloured, and Indian.

Abstract

The vuvuzela, a one metre-long plastic horn commonly found at South African domestic football matches, was a controversial issue for television viewers watching the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa as the broadcasters struggled to manage the droning sound of the horns. FIFA president Sepp Blatter and the local organizing committee defended vuvuzelas, with Blatter declaring that the horn ‘is what African and South African football is all about’. This paper questions such essentialized images of African soccer fandom. While there is a myriad of research on European soccer fandom, social science research on African sport often relegates sports fans to the passive role of observer, or omits them completely. Analysing sports fandom through the analytical lens of popular culture positions fandom as ‘the everyday practices and everyday experiences of ordinary folks’. Fandom is not simply society in microcosm but a space for the negotiation of a variety of identities. As such, Johannesburg soccer fandom reifies widening disparities between an emergent black middle class who eagerly consume an increasingly commodified game, and poorer supporters on the margins of the soccerscape.

Keywords:

• commodification
• fandom
• popular culture
• soccer
• South Africa

Notes

† This paper acknowledges the artificial and ambiguous nature of apartheid racial categorization but employs the racial terminology commonly used by the respondents: black, white, coloured, and Indian.

1. Using ‘soccer’ instead of ‘football’ is a conscious attempt to help reverse the ‘symbolic practice … [that] tends to obscure the fact that the term “football” currently refers to a variety of sporting codes’ (Hill 2010, 13). In South Africa, football and soccer can be used interchangeably.

2. For instance, games in the Premier League (England), La Liga (Spain), Bundesliga (Germany), and Serie A (Italy) are regularly broadcast by Supersport, a South African-based satellite television channel that broadcasts in many sub-Saharan African countries.

3. See Giulianotti (2002) for a detailed consideration of this question.

4. My doctoral research examined the salience of race in the post-apartheid soccerscape using an ethnographic methodology with soccer supporters' organizations in Johannesburg. This took place between 2008 and 2010.

5. In South Africa, 42 people died in the Orkney Stadium disaster in 1991, while 43 died 10 years later at Ellis Park in Johannesburg. Both were games featuring the two glamour clubs of the country, Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates. In Ghana, 126 fans died in the capital Accra in 2001; 19 died in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, in 2009; 73 died in Port Said, Egypt, in 2012.

6. Ultras are groups of fanatical and vocal fans who are noticeable at games for their continuous singing and banners. Some ultra groups are linked to far-rights groups, and chant racist, fascist, and anti-Semitic songs at games.

7. Both Farred and Jacobs reflect on their support for Liverpool, who compete in the English Premier League.

8. Kaizer Chiefs and Bidvest Wits compete in the South African Premier Soccer League (PSL).