By Joanne Sage The 2010 Fifa World Cup is in its final stage and the excitement in Southern Africa is still palpable even in Zimbabwe where I work as a nurse for Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on an HIV/Aids treatment project. An excitement that can’t be dampened despite the disappointment of […]
Sport
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Has a footballer ever managed to reverse a referee’s decision?
It’s a question that begs asking, isn’t it? Every time a referee reaches into his pocket to extract a card, he is swamped by players wearing looks of thunderous incredulity on their faces and waving their arms in dramatic disbelief. Never mind the fact that more often than not everybody on the field saw the […]
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The Cup of Spirit
If the primary purpose of a tournament held every four years for four intense weeks is merely to prove which nation is the best, it would be better not to have the Fifa cup at all. There is enough soccer played throughout these four years for anyone to come up with a perfectly legitimate conclusion […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
A second chance at life
By Lungile Dlamini The Thwala family gathers around the small radio set to listen to the commentary of the 2010 Fifa World Cup tournament kick-off. The excitement in the little four-roomed house is so huge, neighbours walking past can almost feel it. Like millions of soccer lovers around the world, the Thwalas have been […]
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Extra Time presents HalfTime’s HIV Conquerors
There are six African teams in the World Cup in 2010 — and another six in the HalfTime five-a-side tournament planned for Friday July 2 in Johannesburg. Swaziland is one of the determined soccer teams of HalfTime. This small nation, South Africa’s nearest neighbour in the Southern African region, and facing an even higher Aida […]
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Fifa: Time for a coup?
By Adriaan Basson Who owns the sea? (BP might think they do, but no.) And street cricket? And climbing up Table Mountain? Horse racing? And walking your dog? So why do we allow Fifa to continue behaving as if they own the beautiful game? Why should I be forced to pay R30 for one reddish […]
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Love in the time of vuvuzelas
When I woke up on the morning of June the 11th, I had a strange premonition, an indefinable feeling of exhilaration and dread. I glanced at the date on my Blackberry screen and I knew: this date means something important, but what? Where had I seen it before? After some mental arithmetic, I worked out […]
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Patriot games
The World Cup dream has arrived, but don’t forget to return to the hard work of fighting corruption and nation building when the world packs up and goes home. While we watch and get lost in the beautiful game, let’s not completely take our eye off the ball.
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Feel it, it is here
People are walking with a spring in their steps. They tread as though the ground is bouncing them to higher goals, higher dreams, higher hopes. People crowd the streets, mingling their colours, their genders, their sexualities all united towards a single goal — to be South Africa. Stony stalwarts of anti-South Africanism have had to […]
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
Score a goal against HIV
*Read MSF’s latest report: No time to quit: HIV/Aids treatment gap widening in Africa.
Posted inNews/Politics, Sport
Nobody calls it quits at half-time!
Truly speaking, the little I know about morality, I learnt it on football pitches. Albert Camus, French philosopher and Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature. In four days’ time the sound of a whistle and crisp thud of a boot on a football will herald a month when the world’s eyes are fixed on South Africa. […]
Posted inLifestyle, Sport
Berry Nieuwenhuys: The Free State boykie who almost played for England
Imagine this. You’re a youngster playing a minor club game of football in Boksburg when a man dashes on to the field during a lull in play and asks if you’d like to play for Liverpool. You wonder if he’s for real, but, of course, accept. A few weeks later, on the other side of […]