SOUTH AFRICA: FOOTBALL / SOCCER - WORLD CUP 2010 - World Cup fever grips the historic township of Soweto

Record ID: 454631

  • Title: SOUTH AFRICA: FOOTBALL / SOCCER - WORLD CUP 2010 - World Cup fever grips the historic township of Soweto
  • Date: 16th June 2010
  • Summary: SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA (JUNE 14, 2010) (REUTERS) BOARD READING 'WELCOME TO SOWETO'
  • Embargoed: 1st July 2010 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: South Africa
  • Country: South Africa
  • Topics: Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVAXRXT667F500FGYDGP0NV1YJA
  • Story Text: World Cup fever has reached an all time high at the historic township of Soweto as residents organise their own sporting tournaments.
    Even young people have been infected with the football bug.
    Eleven-year-old Nokuthula Sebeso is one of many children in Soweto who is experiencing history in the making by having the world's biggest spectacle staged in her backyard.
    A young football fan, Nokuthula hopes South Africa's national team Bafana Bafana will do well in the World Cup.
    "I am happy that South Africa is hosting the World Cup and I am very happy that I am a South African. I wish that people from overseas will enjoy and be comfortable staying in our country and we must be nice to them," said Nokuthula.
    Nokuthula lives with her unemployed mother and two siblings in a one roomed house in Soweto. Her mother Busi Sebeso lived through an historic period in Soweto and remembers those dark days.
    "There was a lot of fighting, there was a lot of violence. White people and Inkata (political party) were killing people. Around 1980's police would enter people's house at night and harass them," said 30-year-old Sebeso.
    Soweto was the epicentre a series of violent clashes between residents and police that took place in South Africa between the 70's and 80's in an effort to put an end to the white minority government.
    Black people were forced to live In Soweto, short for South Western Townships, during the apartheid regime.
    At the height of the resistance, black high school students took to the streets of Soweto on June 16, 1976 to protest the white government's insistence they learn Afrikaans, seen then as the language of their white Dutch-descended oppressors.
    The Soweto riots were bloody. Police opened fire on the demonstrators, killing a number of people and setting off a wave of national protests that received world-wide attention and galvanised black opposition to apartheid.
    The demonstrations spread to other townships around the country.
    In 1991 anti - apartheid activist Nelson Mandela's release after 27 years of imprisonment bore a new dawn in South Africa.
    He was later inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.
    Mandela's former street in Soweto, Vilakazi is the only street in the world to house two nobel prize winners, Mandela and anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu.
    These days, Vilakazi street is a tourist attraction with people coming from all over the world to learn about South Africa's history.
    "We were happy when (Nelson) Mandela was released from prison in 1994. I never imagined that we would have a black president. I was very happy indeed, from there on I knew that life would be different for us (black people)," said Sebeso.
    Soweto is a township of contrasts, while a new middle class has emerged many are still unemployed.
    Once a riot plagued township, the soccer mad-Soweto is ready to shed its image and welcome the world as South Africa host the World Cup for the first time on African soil.
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