No Lwazi Mvovi… that’s about as shocking as PdV’s World Cup selections went last night. Quite a change for South African sports politics. For a country that is used to ridiculous displays of self-sabotage before a World Cup, you’d have to say – this was mild, tame and grown up.
In 2007 we had the Luke Watson drama. We had the ANCYL and politicians climbing in left, right and centre. In 2003, we had Fisbo the Clown a.k.a. Rudolf Straeuli with his distasteful and disturbing pre-World Cup preparations. In 1999, Nick Mallet sacked Gary ‘Steady Eddy’ Teichman and even 1995 saw Kitch Christie selecting his favourite Gauteng players ahead of Tiaan Strauss. But PdV has kept it pretty sane.
Where’s the drama? After the Boks finally win a game, all of sudden we move from banana republic to boring old Canada? Are the front pages of our newspapers and magazines set to be dominated by scandals involving disaffected youths stealing flowers from national monuments and hard-hitting exposes about proposed reforms to import tariff regulations?
I have to say, I watched the first twenty minutes of the Supersport squad announcement half expecting to see Oregon Hoskins wheeling out Gadaffi as the new answer to the Bok’s flyhalf dilemna or PdV announcing with a cheeky grin that the ANCYL would be in charge of redesigning the team logo with an anti-Botswana mural to replace it.
The most scandalous part of the team announcement was having to endure close-ups of Darren Scott’s new “Art Deco” look that seems to have been inspired by some sort of unearthly fusion of General Kurtz from Apocalypse Now and the stone carvings from Easter Island.
So where to from here South Africa? A normal quiet democracy – where we all move out of the crazy rag-tag inner city and head off for quieter suburbs, just like real grown ups?
