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Sorry for the silence Worldtown readers. We’ve been caught up in the frenzy and awe-inspiring World Cup antics for the last 4 weeks too. And just like that, one month later, the magic is over. If you’re like us - the withdrawal has hit you hard and all your freetime is now spent Googling the names of those previously unknown players for some Wikipedia insight into their lives, replaying videos of the greatest - and ugliest - moments, and checking the stats on how likely Ghana is to take the next one home (we all need a feel good story, don’t we?).  Through the lens of an all-encompassing, universal and non-elitist game of football, South Africa found a new platform on which it could be showcased. And with football as the focal point, what exactly did  journalists, commentators and spectators expect from an “authentically” African World Cup? (Surely, it wasn’t Shakira’s Waka Waka as the break-out hit of 2010)

More than anything else that can be seen through the microsm of a month long World Cup in South Africa, it’s worth noting the representation - or rather expected representation - of this event in the eyes of those in line for the spectacle. An expectation that is lucidly summarized by Eve Fairbanks of the Atlantic:

And so the race was on to cover the games in a more authentically “African” setting. The BBC team watched Ghana’s match against Uruguay from the “African Corner” restaurant in a ghetto called Yeoville. One crewman told me it was “amazing,” with people dancing in the streets—although the authenticity was very slightly dampened by the spotting of an al-Jazeera TV crew in the same vicinity. The Canadian newspapermen watched Bafana Bafana versus France in Sakhumzi, a well-knownshebeen—the old apartheid-era name for an underground bar—in the famous black township of Soweto. “Not far away, the tin shacks and scorched earth of the Soweto slums reflect the grim reality that continues to plague the Rainbow Nation,” one of them noted in his post-game report, although mysteriously, the patrons inside seemed happy.

It shouldn’t be shocking to see how journalists exaggerate and pull at images and stories just to captivate and reinforce a particular understanding of a setting. What this should get us to think about is how such experiences will help shape future perceptions of Africa and African people, if we can be so lucky to hope for a change.

And according to this piece by Siddhartha Mitter in okayafrica, it might just be the Vuvuzela the authentically African symbol of noisy, but symphonious-in-its-own-way-celebration that leaves us with that hope.

An “African” item almost entirely liberated, in material and context, from any existing positive or negative stereotype of Africa, the vuvuzela might just do more to promote a healthier relationship to Africa in the West than the funkiest new band, the most stirring Nick Kristof or Bono appeal, or the most earnest art project.