More than vuvuzelas? Towards an understanding of soccer fandom in Johannesburg

Abstract

The vuvuzela, a one metre-long plastic horn commonly found at South African domestic football matches, was a controversial issue for television viewers watching the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa as the broadcasters struggled to manage the droning sound of the horns. FIFA president Sepp Blatter and the local organizing committee defended vuvuzelas, with Blatter declaring that the horn ‘is what African and South African football is all about’. This paper questions such essentialized images of African soccer fandom. While there is a myriad of research on European soccer fandom, social science research on African sport often relegates sports fans to the passive role of observer, or omits them completely. Analysing sports fandom through the analytical lens of popular culture positions fandom as ‘the everyday practices and everyday experiences of ordinary folks’. Fandom is not simply society in microcosm but a space for the negotiation of a variety of identities. As such, Johannesburg soccer fandom reifies widening disparities between an emergent black middle class who eagerly consume an increasingly commodified game, and poorer supporters on the margins of the soccerscape.