How do South Africans outside the major cities feel about football? Are they interested in the World Cup? How do you bring the soccer vibe to South Africa’s most rural communities? I spoke to Hisham Samie, a Capetonian film-maker, about a new project produced by Don Edkins and Laurence Dworkin that he’ll be working on prior to the World Cup.

Sarah goes soccer!

Sarah Osman (1980) was born in Sudan, and has been living in the Netherlands for the past 11 years. She’s been working in the field of development cooperation for the past 3 years, and has recently decided to take her skills and knowledge back to Africa. Her first stop is Cape Town, South Africa. After her column Wanted! Home in Africa for RNW, Sarah goes soccer.  In this latest column, she will share with us her experiences of the build-up to the 2010 World Cup in Cape Town. Not the mainstream news, but background stories that often get missed in the euphoria of the big event.

“We’ll be travelling around South Africa between April and May showcasing different documentaries about football and promoting the World Cup.”

World Cup hype
I asked Hisham where the idea to bring this interesting project to life came from. “The idea was developed by Don Edkins, a renowned film producer, who’s involved with different social projects through Steps for the Future and Day Zero Films. Basically, we want to create awareness and a hype within different communities in South Africa that are not reached during the promotion of the World Cup. We’re going to go into rural communities and set up screenings of interesting documentaries from around the world with a football theme.”

The screenings will be for free and will help people  learn about stories, events and football players from other parts of the world in the build-up to the World Cup.

Dorpies

Football in South Africa is historically seen as the sport of black South Africans. Strangely enough, most other projects focus on uplifting football within black communities, which seems like preaching to the converted. I wondered if Hisham’s project would again focus on these same groups, while other communities remain forgotten.

“Our project is meant for everyone in areas that are not targeted by the publicity around the World Cup. We’ll be setting up screenings in a number of communities all over South Africa, so we’ll also be going into the dorpies [primarily Afrikaans communities]. Those areas are particularly interesting because in many of them, football is not a big sport, so I’m really looking forward to the response.”

I found the project very well thought out, original and well-timed. The co-organisers will also be hosting a Soccer Cinema Festival in Cape Town just before the kick-off from 5 to 10 June.

Doomsayers
Hisham’s take on the World Cup was particularly interesting to me because of his background and his knowledge of the cultural dynamics in South Africa.

“I’m a huge football fan, so I’m very excited about the World Cup and I think it will be fantastic. There’re lots of negative responses in the media about the jobs that will be lost and the so-called “white elephants” that will be left standing. My response to that is don’t pay attention to the media because the World Cup in South Africa will be great! There are people in the Middle East and Asia who never knew that South Africa existed and now they do. That alone is a great thing.”

The crew will be documenting the project from mid April on www.soccercinema.co.za which will go live soon. To learn more, check Steps for the future’s website.