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Chapter 1: What is the significance of the Vuvuzela in the World Cup?
This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Every four years, dozens of football teams from around the world, that's the soccer kind of football for our American listeners, gather for a time-honored tradition, the World Cup. And every four years, millions of football fans from around the world gather for another time-honored tradition, being mad at the World Cup.
Partly, they're mad at the opposing teams. That's the fun kind of mad. But they're also mad at FIFA, the nakedly corrupt organization that runs the tournament. This year, the main reason to be mad at FIFA is for outrageous price gouging. Their new dynamic ticketing system, along with their blatantly self-dealing resale market, are causing ticket prices to skyrocket.
The most expensive seats for the previous World Cup final were $1,600.
Chapter 2: How did FIFA's ticket pricing controversy impact fans?
When the first round of tickets for this year's final went on sale, the cheapest seats in the house started at a staggering $2,790. Then they more than doubled in later rounds. For those who missed the pre-sales, there's always FIFA's resale market, where they take a hefty 15% cut from both buyers and sellers.
Seats behind the goal for that final game were recently listed there for $2.3 million each month. Last year also saw FIFA award a sycophantic peace prize to the sitting U.S. president. The lead-up to the 2022 tournament in Qatar had numerous human rights violations in the construction of the stadiums, reportedly leading to the deaths of hundreds of migrant workers.
The cup before that was hosted by Russia in the wake of their annexation of Crimea. And in 2015, 11 FIFA officials were indicted for accepting over $150 million in bribes. So we thought we'd take you back to a comparatively quaint World Cup controversy from 2010. Plastic horns that were just too dang loud. Enjoy.
In the spring of 2004, journalist Mark Gleeson sat in the front row of a small conference room in Switzerland for a big announcement.
There was a dramatic buildup. There was a lot of tension. Everyone was on edge.
The winning bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup was about to be revealed, and South Africa was among the leading contenders.
I mean, they had all the top guns go to Zurich for that particular announcement. Mandela was there. Bishop Tutu was there. The former president de Klerk was there.
South Africa wanted to be the first African nation to host the World Cup. They also wanted the tournament to be the start of a new chapter. During apartheid, the country was banned from the international sporting community. Now they were on the precipice of hosting soccer's biggest event. South Africans gathered in the streets of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban to await FIFA's decision.
I discovered with you the 2010 FIFA World Cup. will be organized in South Africa.
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Chapter 3: What led to the introduction of Vuvuzelas in South African soccer?
The sound of the vuvuzela.
Back in 2004, nobody really talked about Vuvuzelas. Even people in the soccer world didn't know what they were.
Reporter James Parkinson.
But six years later, by the time the first game of the tournament was underway, the Vuvuzela was the hottest word in sports.
The 2010 FIFA World Cup is ready for kickoff. And to the sound of 80,000 Vuvuzelas, the fun of a...
The Vuvuzela is a two foot long injection molded plastic horn. It plays only one note, a B flat, and it gradually became a regular feature of South African soccer. But prior to the 2010 World Cup, the rest of the world had never heard anything quite like it.
And a lot of people hated it. It's been likened to a giant swarm of angry hornets or a herd of distraught elephants.
So loud in the stadium with the vuvuzelas. It's ridiculous. It's not noisy. There's nothing irritating about it. There's nothing irritating about it.
For fans watching abroad, the constant drone of a vuvuzela wasn't what the beautiful game typically sounded like. European soccer games, or football games, are often characterized by songs and chants bellowed by the supporters.
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Chapter 4: What role did the Vuvuzela play during the 2010 World Cup?
Supporters clubs would hold fundraisers and hammer out travel logistics to away matches, and black supporters clubs in particular played a special role, giving black South Africans who had no say in their government a voice to shape their community through the local team.
Members held elections for various positions in the supporters club, and also through their formal organization, they tried to influence the football club's internal affairs. And so the ability to campaign for office to achieve a kind of social honor and visibility by achieving these high offices was something that was highly valued, particularly in Black communities.
By the 1960s, supporter clubs existed all across South Africa, and they made their presence known through the noise they generated on game days at the stadium.
The crowd of Fort Wilde just quite a bit has left the play, and it's Chief 2, Rich University 2.
playing music at the grounds, chanting, singing, dancing, maybe insulting the opponents. This was something intensely pleasurable and entertaining.
During this time, political opponents of the apartheid regime were banned from gathering. It was one of the many ways the government tried to suppress the liberation movement. But football games and the noise and crowd that came with them made it harder to prevent black politicians from sitting together.
It provided cover in a way by allowing activists to have conversations and even organize particular subversive activities. And in doing so, kind of undermining the white state's surveillance and censorship.
The stadiums were a sort of sanctuary, a place where you could get rowdy and thumb your nose at the government, where you could fly the flag of the anti-apartheid movement while rooting for your favorite team. It was also the place where you could hear one charismatic fan pick up his horn and make a sound that would soon be heard around the world.
So myself, I'm a owner, I'm a founder, I'm a pioneer of the Vuvuzela. It was started by me. This is Freddie Marquet. They call me Mr. Vuvuzela when I walk around. Freddie actually prefers to be called Saddam, an edgy nickname he received during the Gulf War, because he used to set off huge firecrackers at football matches. People would say it sounded like the Iraq War on TV.
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Chapter 5: How did the Vuvuzela change the atmosphere of soccer matches?
He'd bring that horn to local football games to support his team. But instead of squeezing the little rubber bulb at the end, he'd take that off and blow into the horn. I was doing that one to entertain the players, motivate them, encourage them to score at the stadium with this one. 1965, when I arrived in John Speck.
Saddam liked the sound the detached bicycle horn made. He called it a palafala. When his local football club, the Kaiser Chiefs, was established in 1970, Saddam says he brought a number of other homemade horns to the game.
This included a large aluminium horn he called a boogie blast. The boogie blast was basically a long metal stick you could blow into. It was also a long metal stick you could beat someone up with, so stadiums eventually banned it. But by then, in 1989, Saddam says he met with a plastics manufacturer and asked him to make a plastic version of the boogie blast.
This new instrument they created sounded similar.
But it had a different name.
I call it this one Vuvuzela.
Vuvuzela is derived from Zulu. Vuvuzela mean welcome and unite. Same thing, Vuvuzela, welcome and unite. Saddam says he coined the name Vuvuzela back in 1992, a claim he supports with photos of him blowing his many horns at football games in the 70s and 80s and a Vuvuzela in the 90s. He also recorded an album in 1999 titled Vuvuzela Cellular.
Saddam tried selling some of these plastic horns at football matches, but it just never really gained traction. Even at Kaiser Chiefs games, he would often be one of the only supporters in the crowd blowing a vuvuzela.
However, that slowly started to change when a company in Cape Town started mass-producing their own plastic horns, which they also called a vuvuzela.
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Chapter 6: What historical context surrounds the use of Vuvuzelas?
Their version of the horn was cheaper and safer in that you couldn't beat someone up with one.
Actually, Roman, you technically could beat someone up with it.
Right. It wouldn't hurt as bad.
Look, we were at the forefront of developing the first plastic version of a tin horn that used to be used in football here in South Africa. And because those horns were quite unsafe at the time, we saw the gap in the market to produce a plastic version of that one.
Initially, Van Skulkvik's company also struggled to sell their Vuvuzelas, but that changed when they started to focus on the marketing.
The company handed out Vuvuzelas for free at football matches and partnered with some local clubs to get more of them into South Africa's stadiums. It wasn't long before there was more interest in the Vuvuzela and sales started to grow. Soon, the instrument could be distinctly heard at games across the country.
The Vuvuzela effectively being a generic horn meant that Van Skulkvik wasn't able to patent the design.
But the word Vuvuzela was unique, so his company got a trademark for the name.
And as South Africa prepared their bid to host the 2010 World Cup, Van Skulkvik and his company were ready to capitalise on the event. The company's efforts were designed to position the Vuvuzela as authentic, including its official slogan, the original sound of South Africa.
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Chapter 7: Why was the Vuvuzela controversial among international audiences?
That was the turning moment, because I do think it was a bit of an issue for FIFA, whether the Vuvuzela was going to be part of the 2010 World Cup or not. It's a moment I remember very distinctly and thinking to myself, this is the Vuvuzela now. We will have the Vuvuzela in 2010.
From the moment the World Cup kicked off, the Vuvuzela was a constant and persistent presence. From the atmosphere in the stadiums to the jokes on late-night TV, it was inescapable.
While broadcasters were trying to mitigate the noise on their end, DIY solutions were making their way around the internet. One of them involved writing your TV's audio through your computer and using software to remove the particular frequencies of the Vuvuzela.
And as the tournament continued, players on the field cited the Vuvuzela for causing communication problems. Lionel Messi, regarded by many as the best player in the world, even went so far as to blame the noise for his team conceding a goal.
The complaints were even enough to inspire a study from the South African Medical Journal. It measured the Vivizella's sound levels, which peaked at 131 decibels. That's as loud as a jackhammer or a jet engine. It concluded that prolonged or regular exposure could cause noise-induced hearing loss.
There was no middle ground with the Vivizella. You either loved it or hated it.
Most of the Viva Zala outrage came from a very Eurocentric perspective. It was an argument about what was considered appropriate in football fan culture, which Dwayne Jethro says was an attack on the idea of Africanness.
It raises old, old ideas of Africa as a dark continent. cultural forms from Africa as being primitive or outdated, et cetera. And I think that's how the outrage was received in South Africa.
And it was in that space that not only the South African Football Association, but also South African fans started to speak back and speak out and to say that this is how we represent ourselves in our sporting traditions and sporting fan culture.
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Chapter 8: What is the current status of the Vuvuzela in football culture?
A few years after the South African World Cup ended, FIFA turned around and banned them from all major tournaments. And several other major sports leagues have as well. But for Dwayne Jethro, that comes with a silver lining.
I'm very glad that no future World Cup tournament will be blessed with a beautiful sound of the Vuvuzela. That the sound will always remain South African.
Just a few months ago, the South African women's football team won their first ever Africa Cup of Nations. When the team arrived at the airport, they were greeted by fans expressing their national pride through songs and chants. Saddam Markey was there too, blowing his vivizella. There were no complaints about the noise. The fans just celebrated the way they wanted to celebrate.
So I'm back with James Parkinson, and you've got another story about football culture in South Africa for us.
Yes. So a few other interesting details came up while I was working on this story, and it has to do with that culture of noise making in the stadiums. And I'm dropping you a picture now so you can see what I'm talking about.
So this must be Saddam Make, who we heard from in the piece, who has a really great voice and a really great look to go with it.
Yes, this is Saddam of Vivacella fame. And in this picture, he's decked out in all this gear, screaming his lungs out at a football match.
He's wearing really large, comically yellow glasses and a helmet with all these different logos on it. And I see stickers of Kaiser Chiefs and even Orlando Pirates on it.
Yes. So what I want to talk about is that helmet, the makarapa, because that was another item like the vivazela that gained popularity during the World Cup. So the word makarapa actually means scrapers. And scrapers is a reference to the migrant workers who used to move into cities like Johannesburg to work in the mines. People would say they scrape for a living.
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