Soccer Against the Enemy

by Simon Kuper

  The white fans disappeared, never to return, even though by now, with armed madmen of all shades on the loose, soccer grounds are among the safest spots in the country. Barely a white fan will drive to a ground in a black township. I asked John Perlman if whites were right to be afraid. “Naaahhh,” he said. “I remember, in the late 1970s, when there was no prospect of any political loosening, I went to Orlando Stadium, which was completely packed. People were hanging from the rafters, and everyone would beckon, ‘White man! Come sit here!’ ‘Why have you come?’ ‘Who do you support?’ ”

  At South African Breweries, the biggest sponsor of South African soccer, Adriaan Botha told me: “I always marvel that amid the turmoil of the townships the soccer stadium is an oasis of peace. In fact, we have more violence at our day-night cricket games.” Why did he think that was? “I think the cricket fans go to matches all tanked up. These guys drink an enormous amount of beer. At the soccer, drinking is not allowed.”

  Even so, the only soccer most whites now watch is the FA Carling Premiership on cable TV. The big British teams have thriving supporters’ clubs, and South Africans like Richard Gough and Roy Wegerle who play in Britain are heroes. Even the blacks watch the English game. “Many people said I was too short for the top level,” says Bennett “Loverboy” Masinga, “but then I looked at players like Diego Maradona, Steve Hodge of Leeds or Ray Houghton of Aston Villa, and that gave me hope.” Why Britain? “We have a colonial anglophile attitude,” diagnosed Perlman. “I watch British soccer because that’s what comes on TV,” shrugged Mark Williams of Hellenic.

  When I asked Mark Gleeson, he exploded: “The majority of our sports editors are Poms! They go in for the whole thing of ‘Glory, glory, England Number One.’ Take the Star today. The Star’s sports editor is Julian Kearns from Yeovil who’ll never leave out an English soccer story, and there are two articles on English soccer: one on the recession, how Halifax Town and Stoke City are losing money, and there’s a long preview of this weekend’s matches. Sport at Business Day is run by a guy from Yorkshire called Terry Lofthouse. They don’t even have a man on South African soccer!” Also, said Gleeson, the writers who cover the local game are mainly blacks, who are rarely pally with the white sports editor. “Nyamane doesn’t stand up for his rights and he doesn’t get his stories in. When I worked at the Star, it was easier for me to say to the editor, ‘Why have you left my piece on South African soccer out? It’s easier for me to be confident. Nyamane is lazy, but he says, ‘If you’d been fighting as long as I have. . . .’ ”

  Naturally, as soon as the sports boycott ended, South African clubs tried to bring over English teams on tour. When Everton seemed about to arrive, the Weekly Mail ran a piece entitled “Here Come The Whites!,” pointing out the club’s mysterious lack of black players. The first touring teams were Crystal Palace (complete with that friend of the black man, Ron Noades) and Sheffield Wednesday, and whites flocked to the matches. In Pretoria, they were spared the townships: for the match against Wednesday, the Pretoria city council let Sundowns use the Loftus Versfeld rugby ground, near the city center. I drove from Sacks’ house to Loftus, which was deserted but for a dozen black workmen sprucing up the stands. It is a modern ground, with its own railway station, opposite a Dutch Reform church in a mansion suburb for whites, and as much an Afrikaner clubhouse as the government building in Cape Town. Sundowns vs. Wednesday was the first soccer game ever to be played there.

  Behind the ground is the Pretoria Boys’ High School, alma mater of Roy Wegerle. The parade of rugby and cricket fields outdoes any British public school, but there was not a soccer ground to be seen. “I battled for 16 years against a system in South Africa which was anti-soccer,” complained Wegerle, in words strangely reminiscent of the political struggle. “As a white at high school I was supposed to play rugby and cricket. Soccer was for the black kids.”

  Johannesburg. The 1980s were the years of the soccer boom in South Africa: publicity, full grounds, and the construction of a dream stadium. The man behind the boom is now behind bars.

  Abdul Bhamjee, an Indian, brother of Ismail Bhamjee of Botswana, and son of a poor Moslem preacher, left school at the age of 12. He rose to be public relations officer of the National Soccer League (NSL), and a public relations genius. Short, hyperactive, and very funny, he appeared on TV almost every night and fast became the most popular soccer official in the world. He promoted soccer as the “people’s game,” the sport the government ignored. He loved to taunt whites. When a charity soccer tournament packed 100,000 people into a stadium that officially could take 58,000, Bhamjee advised the rugby and cricket boards to hold charity competitions too. “I mean, they could get 20 or 30 people together, maybe 500 if they hyped it up.”

  His title of PR officer was misleading. It was felt, in true South African style, that a black league should have a black chairman, and so Bhamjee the Indian ran the league without the title. He pulled in the sponsors. Businesses liked to be seen helping the blacks, and by 1989 the NSL had built the FNB Stadium, also known as Soccer City, without a penny’s help from the government. An all-seater stadium for 75,000, on the road from Soweto to Johannesburg, it is the finest ground in Africa. “The days when they can tell us how we can play and who we can play and when we can play are finally over,” Bhamjee said when the stadium opened. He told Yorkshire TV: “They say, ‘Give things to the blacks and they’ll fuck them up.’ We’ve proved them wrong.” And he listed his three great qualities as “honesty, sincerity, and integrity.”

  “If there had been a one man, one vote election in South Africa, Bhamjee would have won it,” Leon Hacker told me. Hacker, a thin man with a lined face, had sat on the NSL committee with Bhamjee. “Every black could hold his head up high thanks to the accomplishments of the NSL,” Hacker said. “It was the biggest company in South Africa run by blacks, as well as the most high profile. Bhamjee said one season that we had had six million fans. If we say that we had four million that year, and if you add sponsorship income to that, the NSL dealt with enormous amounts of money.”

  “The moola is bulging in the pockets of the top brass,” journalist Vusi Khumalo warned shortly before he died. When the Bhamjee scandal finally broke, the surprise was not so much the fact of fraud as the sums involved. Bhamjee was found guilty of 33 counts of theft involving nearly £2 million, and was given a 14-year jail sentence. He remained a PR officer to the last, telling the court as he left for prison, “I wish you a prosperous 1992.” The stolen money is said to be in Botswana.

  Fraud has become a South African custom, and most scandals are greeted with shrugs. When the owner of the Sundowns was found to have defrauded various banks, there was even public sympathy for him: he had endowed scholarships for poor children, he had built a good soccer team, and he had treated his players to a trip to London to watch the FA Cup final. That he and his mistress came along too was a mere detail. Freed from prison early, he tried to buy a new club, but failed. (“Prices have gone through the roof,” he complained.)

  But the NSL scandal reverberated, for the league had become a symbol of the new South Africa. The NSL committee had seemed an example to the country’s politicians. Here was a body with a black chairman, Rodger Sishi, who supported Inkatha; a white liberal lawyer, Hacker, as vice chairman; and an Indian spokesman who supported the ANC. “Another white lawyer, President F.W. de Klerk, will be watching with interest to see if the cooperation works,” I wrote in the Berliner Tageszeitung in 1991, when it seemed to be working. Gleeson grumbled to me that he had written the same thing, and even Bhamjee had concurred: “The NSL in my humble opinion is a model for a society.”

  Then the scandal broke, and suddenly it was the racists who were drawing the moral. The affair so upset Hacker that he withdrew from soccer. When I asked him whether he had ever thought of the NSL as a model for South Africa, he was honest: “That’s what I thought. Even the police and defense-force teams were playing matches against black teams. There was then no contact in any
way between blacks and whites, but there was on the field.” In that case, did the scandal disillusion him about the new South Africa? “The scandal came at such an inopportune time—at a time when people were beginning to hold out hope that we could be governed successfully by blacks. Then the cynics could say, ‘There, you see what happens when blacks get positions of authority.’ ” So what had Hacker learned? “Our system in this country has deprived the underprivileged for so many years that when they get control over large sums of money they’re going to be tempted.”

  Then it turned out that most of the other members of the committee were on Bhamjee’s payroll. Hacker resigned, aghast. “I thought I was making a contribution to the sport, to the people, to the country, but really I was being made a fool of,” he told me. “I didn’t sleep for three months when this thing became known. I felt a sense of guilt that I had not protected the money of the people. I haven’t been to a match since the scandal. It’s very hard. I’ll watch the Nigerian match on TV.”

  Cape Town. I took the bus south from Johannesburg to Cape Town (a 17-hour journey) and two days into 1993, I met a delegation from Cape Town Hellenic.

  Cape Town has beaches, mountains and Dutch colonial architecture, but we met on an industrial estate outside town. The Hellenic chairman, George Hadjidakis, is a soft-drinks king, and assembled in the Seven-Up headquarters were Hadjidakis himself, the Bafana Bafana striker Mark Williams, and two Englishmen, Johnny “Budgie” Byrne and his son Mark. Budgie, who had been an England player in the 1960s, told me, “I could take the laces out of the ball.” He had managed Hellenic for nearly 20 years. Mark was the club center-back.

  Thanks to the end of sanctions, Hellenic was about to represent South Africa in the CAF Cup, Africa’s version of the UEFA Cup. In the first round, they had drawn a club from Malawi. “Not only is it the first time in the history of the Cup that Hellenic is involved, not only is it the first time that a South African team is involved, It’s the first time ever that a white team is involved,” said Hadjidakis, a large Greek in a jersey and shorts. But Budgie, in shorts and a T-shirt, was worried about going into “Africa.” “I saw grown men crying their eyes out in Ghana, Ron Greenwood included, when we went there with West Ham. And they were right, it was disgusting. But you’ve got a job to do.” Hellenic had tried to sign Roger Milla. They had failed, but Milla’s German agent had let them in on the tricks of African soccer. Budgie explained: “It starts with the transport, the hotel, the chanting outside our hotel, the drugs they put in your food to give you diarrhea, It’s terrible, and that’s just what the blacks do among themselves.” “I think as a white side we will be given more respect,” Hadjidakis told him. “Also, there is a big Greek community in Malawi and I know the president.” We all expressed surprise. “It’s true,” affirmed Hadjidakis. “Greeks being a nation of nomads, there is a Greek community in every nation. My wife is a third generation Greek from Zaire. I think the night before the game we should go for a big barbecue at some Greek house.” “And maybe they’ll let us pitch a tent in the garden so we won’t have to sleep in the hotel,” suggested Budgie. Hadjidakis reassured him again: “I have travelled in Africa a little, and I know that the Malawians are the most peaceful and love-able blacks in the whole of Africa.”

  How had Hellenic managed to finish second in the league with gates of just 3,000? The black teams lacked discipline, explained Budgie. “Blacks will always have that way with them—I’ve never been involved in coaching them—unless you can get them at an early age, like Peter Ndlovu. You have to mix in a couple of white players in the key positions, keeper, center-back, central midfield, striker, to keep the discipline. At Hellenic, we rely on discipline—we don’t have their skill.” He pointed to Williams, a man of color, who giggled. “He’s the most indisciplined player you could ever meet. He’s always late for training, he always annoys me. Some of his excuses are amazing. But maybe if I get him right I’ll bugger him up. There are two professionals among us: him,” pointing at his son, “and me. Mark kicks players in training! No one else does that here.”

  Mark Byrne drove me home in his van and explained on the way why the Bafana Bafana was in a four-week training camp. “Half of those guys live in tin shacks. Mark Williams has just moved into a proper house, but before he lived with eight people in a shack. That’s why the black clubs move into hotels two or three days before a match.” Budgie had arranged several trials for his son at English clubs. Once, at a Portsmouth practice, he had marked Paul Mariner and had ended up with four stitches in his forehead and three in his shin. “I asked Mariner, ‘What was that all about?’ and he just said, ‘If you can’t fucking take it, fucking fuck off.’ There’s nothing like that in South Africa.”

  Johannesburg. It is easy to sneer at Budgie Byrne. Granted, his language could do with a polish, but even sophisticated South Africans agree that whites and blacks tend to play soccer differently. After all, they learned it separately.

  Phil Nyamane of the Star recalled for me a 1973 match between the South African Whites and the Blacks. “The whites played the offside trap, laid off the ball and ran into space, whereas our guys tried to walk the ball into the net, and we were beaten. The whites are taught tactics at a very young age, but when it comes to technique I think we’ve got it.” Terry Paine, once of Southampton and now manager of Wits University, concurred in his own special language: “The black player basically has a very high skill factor. The blacks will tell you themselves that what they need is the discipline encroached on their makeup.” Neil Tovey, a white ballwinner at the Chiefs, called his role “a white man’s job in a black man’s team.” (Tovey was captain of the Bafana Bafana until he went on vacation instead of going to Helderfontein.)

  So why did the blacks play “piano and shoeshine?” There was more to it than just the boycott, said Perlman. “If they’re doing their tricks and sticking it to someone on the pitch, It’s a glorious thing. It’s saying, ‘We do have something. Our community has something. ’ I really enjoyed it when a clever black player made an onrushing white player fall on his arse. That was me, as a white liberal, getting the thrill vicariously, so you can imagine how much it must have meant to the black player himself.”

  On days when they are feeling optimistic, South Africans like to say that their country has everything: gold, sunshine, and an ideal mix of white and black. They tell you that the new South Africa will be as rich as Switzerland, have no crime, and that it will win the 1998 World Cup. “If you mixed the skill of the black players and white efficiency, you could have the next Brazil,” Gary Bailey has predicted. He elaborated: “The whites do the organizing and defending, the blacks do the creating and scoring. The blacks can’t really defend because they don’t realize that one mistake can cost you the match.” Yet asked in the same interview to pick his South African team, he chose two black defenders, a black ball winner in midfield, and two white strikers. The notion that the blacks are stylish and the whites efficient is a little lazy.

  Gaborone, Botswana. To prepare for Nigeria, the Bafana Bafana was playing a friendly against Botswana, so Gleeson, his co-journalist Peter Auf der Heyde and I crammed into Peter’s father’s Mercedes and drove north. I am now one of the few soccer writers in the world to have visited Gaborone twice.

  At the border there was an hour-long line of fans, and in it were three shirt-sleeved politicians: Essop and Aziz Pahad, and the tiny Thabo Mbeki. Of course Mark knew them all. Mbeki had been the ANC representative in London during the years of exile, and was thought certain to become Foreign Minister in the first mixed cabinet, yet here he was, his shirt over his trousers, patiently lining up at the Botswanan border.

  We saw the politicians again on the other side of the border. We were busy pumping up a flat tire on the Merc when they drove past us in a battered little vehicle. In South Africa, the political future is so uncertain that the locals are always on the lookout for omens, and this lack of side was a good one.

  In Gabs, Mark went to stren
gthen some contacts at the National Stadium, and Peter and I strolled to the Gaborone Sun, found two deck chairs away from the mêlée, and had a drink. Peter, a former semiprofessional goalkeeper, is the soccer press in South Africa. Described by his friends as a madman, he edits and publishes the monthly Soccer Arena and the South African Soccer Yearbook, and he and Gleeson were then working on the first ever African Soccer Yearbook. They promised it would be “European standard,” but it was tough going. In Africa, to find out how many caps a player has, or his weight, or date of birth, you have to ask him himself and hope he remembers.

  Drowsing in the chair, I asked Peter how a man gets started in soccer publishing. He said he had been working for Chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party until one day he was sacked. Inkatha paid him a settlement, and he used the money to set up his publications. “Why did they fire you?” I asked. “They said I was an ANC spy.” “If you were a spy, why did they pay you a settlement?” “Their only evidence was that the government security forces had told them I was a spy. They could hardly say, ‘We know, the government told us,’ so they paid me a settlement.” The story ended there: he never told me whether or not he really had been a spy. Thus a country acquires its soccer press.

  But Peter had just started a second career. On his first venture as a soccer agent, he had found a German Bundesliga club willing to sign the South African captain Steve Komphela. Komphela was delighted, until Palacios called him in for a chat. The player was given to understand that unless he dropped Peter and took Marcelo Houseman as his agent, he would be out of the squad, captain or not.

  We went back into the Sun, interviewed Fickert, and ran into Komphela, a thickset man—he played at center-back. He and Peter eyed each other tensely. “Don’t worry about it now,” Peter told him. “Just play.” We popped into the Sowetan reporters’ room, next door to Komphela’s. On the bed lay an enormously fat young man, the reporter, while the photographer did something to his films. Peter pointed to the man in the bed and announced to me: “He’s the one, he’s responsible.” It appeared that the man was responsible for coining the nickname “Bafana Bafana.”