AFRICAN culture dictates that as we edge closer to a monumental occasion such as the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup at the eye-catching calabash that is Soccer City, we should approach it with a calculated sense of déjà vu.
AFRICAN culture dictates that as we edge closer to a monumental occasion such as the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup at the eye-catching calabash that is Soccer City, we should approach it with a calculated sense of déjà vu.
The impact of our immediate influence is to be in a positive and invigorated spirit. The horizon is beckoning.
Isn't 2010 the realisation of the euphoria that held us captive as a people with a sense of a shared destiny? We collectively exploded into national pride as South Africans, suspending our negativity and inability to bury the past.
Understandably notching up such a milestone elevated our status as the continent's economic giant with the best infrastructure.
This endorsed the often-ignored reality that we are the epitome of what a truly multiracial and harmonious community can, with alacrity, disagree agreeably to agree about.
Convergence must be approached with a sense of pride and tolerance for varying view points.
Yes, we can hold different views, but it is the accommodation of all of them that to a large extent makes us a positive nation.
Have we forgotten how the nation's morale dipped collectively when Charles Dempsey exercised his democratic, however misconstrued, right to deny us the 2006 Soccer World Cup?
We had, collectively, put our shoulders to the wheel to mount the 2010 World Cup, which we are now hosting.
We are a few inches from creating history that will allow Africa, given a chance and knowing how to propitiate it, to match standards that have always been used to relegate Africa to the periphery.
When we succumbed to the ultimate power of influence in 2006 we did not despair. The Government defied the expectations of a monolith by giving unimpeded support to the sterling onslaught by Irvin Khoza and Danny Jordan et al to secure the 2010 version.
Their magnificent and strategic onslaught debunked any notion that we are a classic Third World country. We rank highly with the elite West, which contributes in influencing what life is like on earth.
They call it a global village where those who possess the means to influence knowledge production predominate in imposing their rationale on the rest of us.
Fortunately we happened to be blessed with the very essence of iconic realism in one Tata in Rolihlahla Nelson Madiba Mandela. Never have we had an icon of such proportions.
We are lucky to be recipients of such a propitious symbol. It is not his incarceration that qualified him. It is his naked humanity and humility that stripped him of negative vibrations. The presence of brutality made him see the harmony of simplicity and realism.
Derrick Thema, Johannesburg
SA about to make history
AFRICAN culture dictates that as we edge closer to a monumental occasion such as the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup at the eye-catching calabash that is Soccer City, we should approach it with a calculated sense of déjà vu.
AFRICAN culture dictates that as we edge closer to a monumental occasion such as the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup at the eye-catching calabash that is Soccer City, we should approach it with a calculated sense of déjà vu.
The impact of our immediate influence is to be in a positive and invigorated spirit. The horizon is beckoning.
Isn't 2010 the realisation of the euphoria that held us captive as a people with a sense of a shared destiny? We collectively exploded into national pride as South Africans, suspending our negativity and inability to bury the past.
Understandably notching up such a milestone elevated our status as the continent's economic giant with the best infrastructure.
This endorsed the often-ignored reality that we are the epitome of what a truly multiracial and harmonious community can, with alacrity, disagree agreeably to agree about.
Convergence must be approached with a sense of pride and tolerance for varying view points.
Yes, we can hold different views, but it is the accommodation of all of them that to a large extent makes us a positive nation.
Have we forgotten how the nation's morale dipped collectively when Charles Dempsey exercised his democratic, however misconstrued, right to deny us the 2006 Soccer World Cup?
We had, collectively, put our shoulders to the wheel to mount the 2010 World Cup, which we are now hosting.
We are a few inches from creating history that will allow Africa, given a chance and knowing how to propitiate it, to match standards that have always been used to relegate Africa to the periphery.
When we succumbed to the ultimate power of influence in 2006 we did not despair. The Government defied the expectations of a monolith by giving unimpeded support to the sterling onslaught by Irvin Khoza and Danny Jordan et al to secure the 2010 version.
Their magnificent and strategic onslaught debunked any notion that we are a classic Third World country. We rank highly with the elite West, which contributes in influencing what life is like on earth.
They call it a global village where those who possess the means to influence knowledge production predominate in imposing their rationale on the rest of us.
Fortunately we happened to be blessed with the very essence of iconic realism in one Tata in Rolihlahla Nelson Madiba Mandela. Never have we had an icon of such proportions.
We are lucky to be recipients of such a propitious symbol. It is not his incarceration that qualified him. It is his naked humanity and humility that stripped him of negative vibrations. The presence of brutality made him see the harmony of simplicity and realism.
Derrick Thema, Johannesburg