Anyone coming from outta space and landing in Sandton, Johannesburg on Wednesday afternoon would have thought Bafana Bafana had just won the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Thousands of Bafana Bafana fans from all walks of life swamped the streets of Sandton to show their support for the boys ahead of their first match with Mexico on June 11.

The fans had come to join the ‘United We Stand’ campaign, a joint initiative between my employer Primedia Broadcasting, Southern Sun and Supersport

Wearing their Bafana Bafana jerseys, they sang, danced and made the circle bigger, as they blew vuvuzela’s, kuduzela’s and the minizela, a miniature trumpet.

It was a real momentous occasion, the rainbow nation was indeed coming alive.

A few months ago, few people had kind words for the team. The nation was disappointed with the uninspiring team and many said they would be lucky to win a single match.

Since the return of Carlos Alberto Perreira, the team has not lost a match and the fans are hyped up.

Let’s get the party started and hope on July 11, 2010, we can go back to the streets and party all night long.

Taurai Maduna is a well known and talented Zimbabwean photographer. He’ll be sharing World Cup 2010 photographs with us. Here is a Bafana Bafana fan seizing the cup for South Africa!

All rights reserved – if you’d like to use this photograph, visit our web site and write us an email.

Well done to the Mail & Guardian for their persistence:

SA government ordered to release hidden Zim election report By Alex Bell
07 June 2010
SW Radio Africa

The South African government has been ordered to release a hidden report on the 2002 elections in Zimbabwe, after a successful court bid by a local newspaper.

Since 2008 the Mail & Guardian has been trying to have the report released, amid widespread speculation that it contained evidence showing that Zimbabwe’s 2002 disputed election was not free or fair. Judge Sisi Khampepe and Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke were at the time commissioned by then president Thabo Mbeki to visit Zimbabwe and report back on the state of the election. The report was handed over to Mbeki but never made public, although the former President insisted the electoral process in Zimbabwe was completely democratic.

The newspaper’s efforts to access the details of the report were repeatedly denied, leaving it little choice but to seek the intervention of the High Court. The government, now under President Jacob Zuma’s leadership, has seven days to release the report to the Mail & Guardian, after the High Court ruled in the newspaper’s favour last Friday. The government can appeal in that time, but their plan of action is not yet known.

Mail & Guardian Editor Nic Dawes told SW Radio Africa on Monday that he is “extremely pleased” with the outcome of the court challenge, calling it a victory for “freedom of information in South Africa.” He explained that there is a “sense” that the report “will say something very different to what Mbeki was saying about the elections in Zimbabwe.”

The government has argued that the report was ‘confidential’ and a “record of the cabinet and its committee.” They said it contained information “supplied in confidence by or on behalf of another state, for the purpose of assessing or formulating a policy,” and that the content of the report was not in the public interest. The government has also argued that the report would lead to a deterioration of relations between the two countries, as South Africa is the facilitator in Zimbabwe’s ongoing political crisis.

The newspaper has in turn argued that the report is of enormous public interest, as the 2002 elections were marred by vote-rigging, intimidation, violence and fraud by Robert Mugabe’s government, despite South Africa’s contention that the election was free and fair. Dawes also explained that the report was never handed to cabinet despite being described as a “document of cabinet,” and instead remained within the office of the President, rousing more suspicions of its content.

Dawes described the court’s decision as an important one for South Africans who he said were left “injured” by the government’s abysmal handling of the Zimbabwe crisis. Former President Thabo Mbeki faced international criticism for his policy of ‘quiet diplomacy’ towards Zimbabwe; a policy that many say has crippled South Africa’s own reputation. Dawes said that it was a “painful and difficult period” for South Africa, because “it seemed to jar with our own democratic values.”

“The truth of the report might be a way to address some of the hurt and frustration by reasserting our democratic values,” Dawes said, expressing hope that the Zuma administration won’t fight the court’s ruling “too hard.”

“The Zuma administration has taken a more robust and assertive approach than Mbeki, and appealing this ruling and hiding this report will be very damaging,” Dawes said.

Downstairs at Libby’s restaurant, football fever is alive and well. People of all shapes and ages and sizes are streaming in to watch the Brazil-Zimbabwe World Cup warm up match being played in Harare as we speak.

But unfortunately, the facts behind the match provide a demoralising reminder of the business side of the sport. As The Telegraph reports:

Cash-strapped Zimbabwe, which struggles to pay its teachers and doctors, had to fork out 1.8 million dollars to the Brazilians to get them to play in Harare, financed in part by corporate donations.

We sent out the following text message to our subscribers asking what they thought of this.

Kubatana! Fly the Zimbabwe flag today. Go Warriors! While civil servants get peanut salaries Zim pays US$1.8 mil to get Samba boys to play here. Wot do u think?

Many were less than impressed. The first messages we’ve received are below:

As one of the civil servants, that’s inhuman we are really suffering togther with our kids strikes have proved fruitless

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Desperate theives

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Good it  reliefs stress at times.
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I think vanofanira kupa mari ma civil servants inotenga
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I wonder what exactly the country is set to benefit from playing Brazil when we wont be at the WC. Maybe someone else knows?

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I ws deadly embarassed too by dat

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If i say they are mentally disturbed it’s mockering them.Ngatiti ndibaba vanosiya mumba musina hupfu vachindosasana

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Its inhuman

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It’s not fair. Wait til elections are here. It’s time for change.
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ITS TERRIBLE
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Nonsense.they.don’t.think
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Not fair. What do we gain frm that game. Chasing history wl civil servants wallow in poverty.
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That’s crazy!

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The authorities are cruel and shameful. It was even more demeaning that they chose to give the servant time to watch da game yet they don’t have to spare

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The move is worth the money!
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They must strike and pasi nehurumende yeuori

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Unrelistic & Outrageous

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Wasteful gvt

Zimbabwean activist Rejoice Ngwenya has just published a new article . . .

Who would have thought that at this landmark stage in my life, this only year I will turn 50, I would once again read the Daily News, The Mail, The Daily Gazette, The Worker newspapers? Is it not your eternal sense of generosity that finally manifests itself in the multiplicity of print media? Those who pour scorn on your act of magnanimity know little of your history. Allow me therefore to pay homage by chronicling your unprecedented and amazing acts of benevolence for the benefit of perpetually ungrateful sceptics!

Your highness, Supreme leader for life, Head of this and Commander-in-Chief of that, may I remind the unholy cabal of reactionary sceptics that it is by your self-sacrifice that our country ever tested real democracy! Growing up as a young man from the rural areas, I would visit city relatives and see public toilets written ‘whites only’. Now as a grown man in Harare, I visit commercial farms and see plaques written ‘blacks only’. You are truly a great man!

In the 1980’s, you acted like a real mature father by disciplining a small clique of unruly dissidents in Matebeleland who were destabilising your flourishing socialist country. Although there were minor incidents where twenty thousand civilians lost their lives in what Americans would term ‘collateral damage’, your acts of courage resulted in the dignified submission to your authority of one Joshua Nkomo, hence the peace and tranquillity that prevails since then.

Your highness, Supreme leader for life, Head of this and Commander-in-Chief of that, in 1990, you inspired, through your fatherly grip of Parliament, the removal of the clause that ring-fenced the political and property rights of residual Rhodesian elements. This was the beginning in the long journey of Zimbabweans being in charge of their destiny. As you always say, Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans, Britain for British and America for Americans. If I may add, Your highness, Supreme leader for life, Head of this and Commander-in-Chief of that, Mercedes Benz cars for the Germans. We would rather use scotch cart presidential convoys as a true reflection of our endangered tradition than being sucked into the material gluttony of the misguided European Union!

In the 1990s, you continued to protect us from the vagaries of Western intimidation by again inspiring Parliament to retain the state of emergency. Like any father, children must be protected from unknown adversaries. You acted in our best interest, because you knew then as you still do now what is good for us. The West has brought civilisation, but at high cost: pollution, national debt, homosexuality and reckless media that attempts to seek truth through invasion of privacy!

Your highness, Supreme leader for life, Head of this and Commander-in-Chief of that, I should dwell a bit on the issue of invasion just to show your immortal benevolence. When distant neighbour Laurent Kabila was under threat of invasion by combined Ugandan and Rwandese forces in the guise of ‘rebels’, you single-handled repelled the military misfits into the jungles. Your detractors came out guns blazing alleging that your soldiers were looting diamonds using national resources at a whopping one million United States dollars per day! What hogwash! Whoever heard of a ‘cheap’ war? I’m glad to mention that your act of courage has resulted in strong bilateral ties with the Democratic Republic of Congo, and our experience of guarding diamond mines is now paying off handsomely at our very own alluvial Chiyadzwa Diamond Mines. Those detractors who claim the country is not benefiting from Chiyadzwa cannot explain how Your highness, Supreme leader for life, Head of this and Commander-in-Chief of that, you can afford to attend most international conferences and African presidential inaugurations with one hundred of your staff without a single cent from the immature MD-something party minister of finance!

Another act of invasion is the gutter press. Your highness, Supreme leader for life, Head of this and Commander-in-Chief of that, at one time you had to use your good judgement to discipline journalists and newspapers that falsely claimed you paid Lobola for someone or your committed party members beheaded a villager. After having forgiven them, they abused your immortal benevolence until you requested your able minister for information to legally shut all of them down. Those British and American journalists who insisted on reporting half-truths about human rights were politely requested to leave. All humans, especially Zimbabwean ones, have rights, so why would anyone keep talking about it?

Your highness, Supreme leader for life, Head of this and Commander-in-Chief of that, in the late 1990s, your good acts of generosity were again on public display when fifty thousand destitute freedom fighters were empowered by your personal gifts of money. The ugly face of detraction again reared its head by false allegation of favouritism, plunder, corruption and abuse of state funds. How a father can give his children money but be accused of all this beats my mind! There are some white good-for-nothing bushconomists who claim that was the beginning in the collapse of our economy. How untrue? Do they want to ignore the negative effects of racist Bretton Woods institutions whose force-fed liberalisation prescription laid the foundation for Zimbabwe’s economic demise? Your highness, Supreme leader for life, Head of this and Commander-in-Chief of that, you acquired your knowledge from the candle light of prison cells while these motor-mouths revelled in the bright lights of Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and Rhodes, but they keep being overpowered by their ignorance of basic economics principles!

Your highness, Supreme leader for life, Head of this and Commander-in-Chief of that, I would like to conclude by thanking you for giving us land. All acts of generosity will be immortalised in the anus, I mean annals of Zimbabwe’s history. It is not your fault that beneficiaries are abandoning the land to lie fallow. Now am even more excited that you are planning to give us mines and industry. These belong to us and so as we wait for the newspapers that will start operating due to your immortal benevolence, Your highness, Supreme leader for life, Head of this and Commander-in-Chief of that, I hope that they will desist from gutter, yellow journalism that fails to appreciate your good deeds. If I have inadvertently insulted you by singing  these praises due only to Your highness, Supreme leader for life, Head of this and Commander-in-Chief of that, I your humble servant, submit myself to the punishment that befits my transgression.