South Africa 2010: Colour, noise, deafening horns, and wildlife surprises - I just hope the locals don't miss out

By Simon Bird

Published 16:09 07/06/10

• 

Follow Simon Bird on Twitter

Take a drive away from England's newly built, pristine green training base in Rustenburg and the long road to Johannesburg sweeps through rural South Africa.

For two hours and more there are mountains on the horizon, dry terrain slowly turning brown after the rains, platinum mines dotted around, and every now and then a town.

Towns in this area consist of haphazardly arranged shelters thrown together with corrugated iron, rocks holding down their roofs. There are Tuck Shops at every turn, small traders selling essentials, an over-supply of hairdressing salons.

The "houses" are no bigger than your living room at home, with a small plot growing sweet corn or lettuce outside, and makeshift fences marking out the family land.

The sight of such simple housing jars alongside billboard adverts from the FIFA World Cup's corporate sponsors, and the promotions for the gated oasis of consumption of Sun City, where myself and our England press party, and many WAGS, are based for the duration of the tournament.

Beyond selling flags at traffic lights, and doing a good trade in bags of oranges from the local groves (20 for 15 rand, about £1.50), you do wonder how much impact a multi-national driven world festival of football has on the ground, in the shacks we speed past every day.

New roads have been build, a billion pounds spent constructing stadia, helping locals in jobs, and for a month South Africa will be the centre of attention. Legacy projects have targeted education, children and reducing HIV, and all will hopefully benefit in the long run.

FIFA are backing a project called 1GOAL which is aiming to get every child in the country back to school by 2015. Amazingly 72 million South African kids do not attend primary school and there will be an appeal this week to urge nations and private companies to help.

But locals are asking if their incomes will really rise in the long run, or whether there will be money left to ensure everyone has access to basic services that are lacking even in some areas of Johannesburg.

Perhaps it will be enough for Africa to host such a major event, boost esteem, and show that this first World Cup in the continent won't be the last.

After five days in South Africa it is certainly serving up images and experiences that will develop over the next four weeks.

There has been colour, noise, deafening horns, friendly smiling locals, wildlife surprises and clashes of culture.

It is usually away from Rustenburg, and the controlled environment of England's training that the most colour can be found.

Take for example the sweaty, chaos at Argentina's open training session on Sunday afternoon in a quiet, leafy suburb of Pretoria.

Thousands of Argentine fans descended in blue and white shirts, wigs, draped in flags. Maradona limped to the training pitch chomping on a giant cigar, and blew kisses like some kind of religious figure throwing out his blessings to the crowd.

In the media tent afterwards 300 journalists packed in mainly from South America. And here was a culture clash. When a not unattractive female press officer walked on to stage to announce two players would take questions in ten minutes, she was wolf-whistled and applauded for her glamour. How would that go down if it happened around our Premier League grounds! Cases for sexual harassment all round.

Outside there was a party going on. Civilised, with salsa music. And here is the best bit, the Argentina team sponsors Quilmes, dishing out free cans of beer. Free. No riot or drunkenness, just fans quaffing, chatting and in friendly spirits.

Earlier on Sunday I attended the USA open day, complete with local kids meeting the players, clearly excited and proud the World Cup had touched their lives.

The US ambassador to South Africa went so far to proclaim the USA would win the World Cup, and none of his players dared disagree. No pressure there.

Track and field legend Ed Moses, whose 100 race-plus 400m hurdle unbeaten streak was a highlight of my teenage sporting years, was there too saying he's a recent convert to "soccer" and predicting the World Cup would be "unpredictable."

It is chilly of an evening in South Africa, and when a colleague and I found ourselves stranded at the stadium with no pick up for a couple of hours we were rescued by a kind and exceptionally generous US embassy official from the public affairs section who whisked us across the city to see Maradona.

Such friendly gestures to strangers also extends to the wildlife. Sun City was built in the middle of nowhere, prime territory for monkeys and slightly larger baboons to mix with humans.

They entertained us on the first day by raiding our breakfast cafe, stealing muffins and fruit. There are "primate control officers" all around to scare them off, touting what look like machine guns. They are in fact no more than a type of paintball gun, and the monkeys rarely get hit because the officers are such bad shots.

On an early morning run today I came across a baboon on a rock and decided to snap a picture with my blackberry. But as I lined up the shot an amorous male turned up and, shall we say, performed for the camera! Perhaps it was because the lovely Gabby Logan had just jogged past.

After that I have no idea what will happen next in South Africa.

But I do hope that the people of rural South Africa, away from the glitz, will not miss out.

Follow Simon Bird on Twitter

Fancy winning £3,000 for FREE this month? Play Mirror Football Streak for your chance to win cash prizes! Start predicting now!