E ora il Sud Africa tifa i "kaaskoppen"

[Ortodossia]

Questo è un articolo scritto prima degli ottavi di finale con la Slovacchia, quando nessuno avrebbe pronosticato l'approdo degli Orange in finale, già allora molti sudafricani avevano adottato l'Olanda , sia perchè tanti hanno antiche origini olandesi, soprattutto bianchi e coloureds, sia perchè tanti neri si ricordano l'impegno decisivo dell'Olanda nello spingere la comunità bianca a cancellare il vergognoso sistema dell'Apartheid, tuttavia alcuni neri associano l'Olanda , se non altro per affinità linguistica, al vecchio regime segregazionista.

Da ricordare che uno dei primi paesei che Mandela visitò dopo il crollo dell'apartheid fu proprio l'Olanda, per manifestare gratitudine per l'appoggio ricevuto negli anni :

South African blacks forgive the Dutch

Posted on 27 June 2010



BLOEMFONTEIN —Since South Africa’s team departed the World Cup, conventional wisdom has it that fans here are rooting for Ghana, the continent’s only team remaining in the tournament.
But actually, an enormous percentage of South Africans are rooting for the Netherlands, which plays Slovakia on Monday in Durban. Some of that support comes predictably from whites of Dutch descent such as Merietjie Serfontein, who attended the Netherlands’ first match to root for the Oranje on the South African soil. “The whole country may not be rooting for Holland—maybe just 99%,” he said.
Interestingly, most of that support comes from South African blacks, whose long history of oppression in this country came largely at the hands of the Dutch. From the opening kick of the Netherlands’ first game here against Denmark—a 2-1 victory for Holland—the team has heard hurrahs from stadiums mostly filled with black South Africans.
“We’re past all that,” Melanie Grobbelaar, a 28-year-old black South African said of colonization and apartheid as she and her husband, Daniel, watched Holland’s first game.
A resident of Johannesburg, Ms. Grobbelaar said she was pulling for Holland because two of its players belong to Arsenal, an English club that Ms. Grobbelaar supports.
Even Clive Solomon is rooting for Holland. At 62, Mr. Solomon is old enough to remember vividly the indignities that black South Africans suffered at the hands of Dutch-speaking oppressors. Blacks here had no right to vote, no access to economic success and no freedom outside their designated areas, where 75% of South Africa’s populace was crammed into 8% of the nation’s land.
But in Mr. Solomon’s case there was a special injustice: Despite possibly ranking as one of South America’s top soccer players of his day—or any day—he wasn’t allowed to play on South Africa’s national soccer team, Bafana Bafana.
“We played the black all-province team, but we weren’t allowed to play the white team,” he said, showing off a field where he once played.
Yet on Monday, Mr. Solomon will be rooting for Team Netherlands, one of only two teams that had three wins in the group stage and a favorite to make the quarterfinals by beating Slovakia in Durban on Monday.
“It’s my language and culture,” he said. “Also, I like their style of play.”
About two decades after the fall of apartheid, the Dutch are no longer known primarily as perpetrators. First and foremost, they are known for the language and culture they brought to people here white and black.
Soccer in particular has served as a racial bridge. Just as baseball desegregated ahead of the rest of America, soccer helped speed the end of apartheid.
In the 1970s and the 1980s, soccer preceded society at large in embracing desegregation, often because black teams offered the highest-quality play.
“White players wanted to play in better leagues so they joined black teams,” says Steven Bloomfield, author of “Africa United: Soccer, Passion, Politics and the First World Cup in Africa.” “Soccer was one of the first places in South African where whites and blacks could be together as equals.”
And there’s some gratitude among South African blacks for Dutch soccer in particular. Back in 1987, when African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela languished in prison, the Dutch soccer legend Ruud Gullit dedicated his footballer-of-the-year award to Mr. Mandela.
The next year, Mr. Gullit recorded an anti-apartheid song, “South Africa,” with the reggae band Revelation Time. It was a striking, unusually political statement for a European soccer star.
In 2006—about 16 years after his release from prison and the fall of apartheid—Mr. Mandela agreed to be interviewed by Mr. Gullit on Dutch television. “Ruud, now I have many friends, but when I was on the inside, you were one of the few,” he told him. Mr. Gullit did not reply to a request for comment.
“What Ruud did back then was something that made us all take note of Holland and its football,” says Mr. Solomon.
For some blacks, of course, Dutch language and culture remain too associated with apartheid to go cheering for the Netherlands. Better to cheer on Brazil, a proven winner which also sports yellow and green, or Ghana, the last African country remaining in the 2010 World Cup.
“I’m cheering for Brazil, they’re the best,” said Chris Kholotete, a black 52-year-old nurse from Soweto taking his wife and son to see New Zealand play Slovakia.
All together, the ties between South Africa and the Netherlands—language, culture, history, an admiration for its high-quality European football—are deep enough that the Dutch have often felt like the home team here, and should feel that way again on Monday.
But there are also white strongholds that are passionately Dutch. It “is our language and our culture,” says Melinda Dekker, director of the provincial museums in the Free State, a stronghold of pro-Dutch sentiment that was called the Orange Free State until 1995 and still includes an all-white Afrikaner town called Orania.
By all accounts, a moment of healing took place on May 11, at the dedication ceremony of Clive Solomon Stadium.
The honor amounted to an acknowledgement that “is what we have always wished for football in this country,” said Mr. Solomon. “Of course, where the stadium is now, I remember there used to be a curfew horn at 8:45 pm telling all the colored they had to start heading home,” he said.

Source: The Wallstreet Journal

South African blacks forgive the Dutch | The Soccer Room

[Ortodossia]

Per un approfondimento storico :


Web Dossier 'The Netherlands against Apartheid'