We are the world
June 11, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
We ARE the world.
by Anton Marshall Email · Print
I had to get off the bus a kilometre from where I normally do, and walk the rest of the way to the work this morning. The line of buses stretched way beyond the fanzone on the Grand Parade in Cape Town, and even as the sun was struggling to break the horizon, I could see that this would be a long wait.
This morning vuvuzelas and car horns were blasting – and still are as I write this – making it just a little harder to concentrate on work. It seems like every resident of Cape Town has invested in this most maligned and celebrated Mzansi paraphernalia.
This morning I heard that Madiba’s granddaughter had died in a car crash on the way from the World Cup Kickoff Concert last night, and my thoughts went out to a man I consider to be a father in the African sense – how overjoyed on one hand he would have been to see a World Cup come to SA; but how bittersweet it will now be for this tragedy. Madiba, we are with your family in these times, as you have been with ours for so many years.
But this morning, I also felt like I felt that morning of April 27, 1994. This morning I felt like we – all of us – were actually feeling a true sense of joy and goodwill towards one another. Standing in that line on the way to vote back in ‘94, we looked at each other in much the same way. I saw in people’s eyes then, as I did this morning, a dream realised. It’s not that democracy had arrived, or that the World Cup was here, but that we felt happy about one common thing. Just one thing.
In this lifetime, it’s idealistic to hope that so many of us can feel happy about a universal political ideology, a religion or even a share price. But in music, and also in sport, we come close. The World Cup is not just about football. It’s about feeling – even for a moment – that we live in one world. And that at least for thirty days – at least for one day – at least for 90 minutes, we are citizens of planet Earth.