The Horn That Divided the World Cup

Love it or hate it, one buzzing horn changed the sound of the World Cup forever.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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  you love, like those iced lattes that help you get ready to face the day. So switch your home and auto to Progressive and see if you could save and keep stepping away. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. 99% Invisible is presented by Acura. Curating and designing the perfect experience takes meticulous craft, an obsession with detail, and a love for innovation. Just like museum designers, Acura carefully considers every detail to curate the most engaging, exhilarating, and rewarding experience for drivers.

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  That craft isn't always something you can see, but it's something you'll feel: that flutter in your heart when the engine roars. Every Acura is designed with deliberate intention around how people actually use the vehicles. And that is precision-crafted performance. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Every four years, dozens of football teams from around the world— that's the soccer kind of football for our American listeners—gather for a time-honored tradition: the World Cup. And every four years, millions of football fans from around the world gather for another time-honored tradition: being mad at the World Cup.

• 2:09Roman Mars?

  Partly, they're mad at the opposing teams, that's the fun kind of mad. But they're also mad at FIFA, the nakedly corrupt organization that runs the tournament. This year, the main reason to be mad at FIFA is for outrageous price gouging. Their new dynamic ticketing system, along with their blatantly self-dealing resale market, are causing ticket prices to skyrocket. The most expensive seats for the previous World Cup final were $1,600. When the first round of tickets for this year's final went on sale, the cheapest seats in the house started at a staggering $2,790. Then, they more than doubled in later rounds. For those who missed the pre-sales, there's always FIFA's resale market, where they take

• 2:51Roman Mars?

  a hefty 15% cut from both buyers and sellers. Seats behind the goal for that final game were recently listed there for $2.3 million each. Last year also saw FIFA award a sycophantic peace prize to the sitting US president. The lead-up to the 2022 tournament in Qatar had numerous human rights violations in the construction of the stadiums, reportedly leading to the deaths of hundreds of migrant workers. The cup before that was hosted by Russia in the wake of their annexation of Crimea. And in 2015, 11 FIFA officials were indicted for accepting over $150 million in bribes. So, we thought we'd take you back to a comparatively quaint World Cup controversy from 2010:

• 3:34Roman Mars?

  plastic horns that were just too dang loud. Enjoy.

• 3:46Roman Mars?

  In the spring of 2004, journalist Mark Gleason sat in the front row of a small conference room in Switzerland for a big announcement.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  There was a dramatic buildup, there was a lot of tension, everyone was on edge.

• 3:58Roman Mars?

  The winning bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup was about to be revealed, and South Africa was among the leading contenders.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  I mean, they had all the top guns go to Zurich for that particular announcement. Mandela was there, Bishop Tutu was there, the former president de Klerk was there.

• 4:14Roman Mars?

  South Africa wanted to be the first African nation to host the World Cup. They also wanted the tournament to be the start of a new chapter. During apartheid, the country was banned from the international sporting community. Now, they were on the precipice of hosting soccer's biggest event. South Africans gathered in the streets of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban to await FIFA's decision.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  I discover it with you. The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be organized in South Africa.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  You know, South Africa had come full circle in the sense of its horrible past and how it had moved on from being a pariah state and was now, you know, hosting the biggest event in world sport and very much part of the international family.

• 5:07Roman Mars?

  The celebrations that erupted that day in Zurich were full of cheers and whistles, but also one notorious sound that came to define South Africa's World Cup.

• 5:22Roman Mars?

  The sound of the vuvuzela.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  Back in 2004, nobody really talked about vuvuzelas. Even people in the soccer world didn't know what they were.

• 5:36Roman Mars?

  Reporter James Parkinson.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  But six years later, by the time the first game of the tournament was underway, the vuvuzela was the hottest word in sports.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  The 2010 FIFA World Cup is ready for kickoff. And to the sound of 80,000 vuvuzelas, vuvuzela.

• 5:56Roman Mars?

  The vuvuzela is a two-foot-long injection-molded plastic horn. It plays only one note, a B-flat, and it gradually became a regular feature of South African soccer. But prior to the 2010 World Cup, the rest of the world had never heard anything quite like it.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  And a lot of people hated it.

• 6:16Speaker 05

  It's been likened to a giant swarm of angry hornets or a herd of distraught elephants.

• 6:22Speaker 06

  So loud this day with the vuvuzelas. It's ridiculous. It's not noisy. There's nothing irritating about it.

• 6:28Roman Mars?

  There's nothing irritating but at the end of it. For fans watching abroad, the constant drone of a vuvuzela wasn't what the beautiful game typically sounded like. European soccer games, or football games, are often characterized by songs and chants bellowed by the supporters.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  But the hum of 80,000 vuvuzelas drowned out that type of crowd noise. The sound caused actual headaches for television broadcasters. French network TF1 opted to change their commentators' microphones for a kind that would reject more background noise. Other networks chose to use special audio filters to try and eliminate the vuvuzela from their sound mix altogether.

• 7:16Roman Mars?

  The controversy surrounding the vuvuzela was hard to ignore. It drew attention away from the players on the field and placed the focus on the crowd in the stadiums.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  It also sparked a debate about the history of the vuvuzela and its true origins. For critics, the vuvuzela was a relatively new mass-produced noisemaker. But for supporters, they tended to think of the vuvuzela as an instrument, a loud, attention-grabbing sound that grew out of South Africa's rich footballing tradition.

• 7:46Speaker 06

  In 1862, there's already documented matches that took place in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  That's South African football historian Peter Alegi.

• 7:56Speaker 06

  And that is a year before the Football Association was even founded in England and before the first rules of association football were codified.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Originally, the sport was introduced by British colonizers, seeking to impose their beliefs and values on the locals. But quickly, South Africans embraced football and made it their own.

• 8:16Speaker 06

  It's an interesting story whereby a colonial game really

• 8:21Speaker 06

  Was transformed into a pillar of black culture by the racially oppressed.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  The game was both affordable and accessible, becoming the sport of the black working class.

• 8:35Speaker 06

  And when I use the term black, I'm referring to people who either are self identified or were later classified under apartheid as African, Indian or South Asian and coloured or multiracial.

• 8:50Roman Mars?

  Football was not held in high regard by officials in the apartheid regime. Sports played predominantly by white South Africans like cricket and rugby were the ones that received political backing.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  So as a way to help organise themselves, football teams formed supporters' clubs. These were small but mighty organisations made up of fans from each city or town. Supporters' clubs would hold fundraisers and hammer out travel logistics to away matches. And black supporters' clubs in particular played a special role, giving black South Africans who had no say in their government a voice to shape their community through the local team.

• 9:27Speaker 06

  Members held elections for various positions in the supporters' club and also through their formal organisation, they tried to influence the football club's internal affairs. And so the ability to campaign for office, to achieve a kind of social honour and visibility by achieving these high offices was something that was highly valued, particularly in black communities.

• 9:53Roman Mars?

  By the 1960s, supporter clubs existed all across South Africa, and they made their presence known through the noise they generated on game days at the stadium. The crowd have gone wild, just striking us left the play and it's Chiefs two, Big

• 10:10Speaker 06

  University two. Playing music at the grounds, chanting, singing, dancing, maybe insulting the opponents. This was something intensely pleasurable and entertaining.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  During this time, political opponents of the apartheid regime were banned from gathering. It was one of the many ways the government tried to suppress the liberation movement. But football games and the noise and crowd that came with them made it harder to prevent black politicians from sitting together.

• 10:40Speaker 06

  It provided cover, in a way, by allowing activists to have conversations and even organise particular subversive activities and in doing so, kind of undermining the white state's surveillance and censorship.

• 10:59Roman Mars?

  The stadiums were a sort of sanctuary, a place where you could get rowdy and thumb your nose at the government, where you could fly the flag of the anti-apartheid movement while rooting for your favourite team. It was also the place where you could hear one charismatic fan pick up his horn and make a sound that would soon be heard around the world.

• 11:19Speaker 07

  So myself, I'm the owner, I'm the founder, I'm the pioneer of the Wubuzela. It started by me.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  This is Freddie Marke.

• 11:30Speaker 07

  They call me Mr. Wubuzela when I walk around.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  Freddie actually prefers to be called Saddam, an edgy nickname he received during the Gulf War because he used to set off huge firecrackers at football matches. People would say it sounded like the Iraq War on TV. Saddam Marke is a soccer freak, or a superfan, as they're known in South Africa, the most passionate of football supporters. He loves the South African national team and his local club, Kaiser Chiefs, from Johannesburg. He can be seen at games wearing oversized yellow glasses, a jersey and a mining helmet known as a marke rapa, painted in the team's colours. For Saddam, you might say, football is life.

• 12:10Speaker 07

  My first wife divorced me because of soccer. I said, "Chiefs is my first wife, you're my second wife." Every day, every night, when I sleep, I sleep Chiefs, I sleep soccer, I eat soccer, I talk soccer. I can't talk to you without talking about soccer.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  In between all the soccer chat, I did manage to learn where Saddam grew up, the province of Limpopo, with his large family. His claim to the Vuvuzela dates back to his childhood and a gift he received for his birthday in 1965.

• 12:42Speaker 07

  My brother called Solomon Market. He bought me a bicycle and that bicycle used to have a hoota.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  The hoota Saddam is referencing is a bicycle horn.

• 12:54Speaker 07

  That hoota I've got in here.

• 13:00Speaker 07

  That is a bicycle hoota.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  He'd bring that horn to local football games to support his team. But instead of squeezing the little rubber ball at the end, he'd take that off and blow into the horn.

• 13:14Speaker 07

  I was doing that one to entertain the players, motivate them, encourage them to score in the stadium with this one. 1965, when I arrived in John's back.

• 13:25Roman Mars?

  Saddam liked the sound that a Dutch bicycle horn made. He called it a palafala. When his local football club, the Kaiser Chiefs, was established in 1970, Saddam says he brought a number of other homemade horns to the game.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  This included a large aluminium horn he called a boogie blast. The boogie blast was basically a long metal stick you could blow into. It was also a long metal stick you could beat someone up with. So stadiums eventually banned it. But by then, in 1989, Saddam says he met with a plastics manufacturer and asked him to make a plastic version of the boogie blast. This new instrument they created sounded similar.

• 14:04Roman Mars?

  But it had a different name.

• 14:09Speaker 07

  I call it this one Vuvuzela.

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Vuvuzela is derived from Zulu.

• 14:16Speaker 07

  Vuvuzela mean welcome and unite. Same thing, Vuvuzela, welcome and unite.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  Saddam says he coined the name Vuvuzela back in 1992, a claim he supports with photos of him blowing his many horns at football games in the 70s and 80s and a Vuvuzela in the 90s. He also recorded an album in 1999 titled Vuvuzela Cellular.

• 14:51Speaker 03

  Saddam tried selling some of these plastic horns at football matches, but it just never really gained traction. Even at Kaiser Chiefs games, he would often be one of the only supporters in the crowd, blowing a vuvuzela.

• 15:04Roman Mars?

  However, that slowly started to change when a company in Cape Town started mass producing their own plastic horns, which they also called a vuvuzela.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  The company's name is Massen Kedani Sports. The click is important because the name of the company is from Isitkosa.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  This is Dwayne Jethro. He studies South African culture and wrote about the history of the vuvuzela. Dwayne says that back in 2001, Neil van Skolkvik and his partner Bevel Bachmann got funding to get their business off the ground.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  He pitched this idea of injection molding a horn to a certain size and a certain specification that would be easily used at football matches.

• 15:46Roman Mars?

  Around the same time this new company was getting started, Saddam Make says he approached Neil van Skolkvik to tell him that he was the true inventor of the vuvuzela. Saddam says he tried to strike a business deal.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Did you ever speak with Neil? Neil van...

• 16:03Speaker 07

  Yes, I spoke to him. He promised me, it's vuvuzela. I'm going to get a five franc out of it. It's vuvuzela. And I never get even a cent, but I didn't worry. I didn't complain. I said to myself, God is great.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  We tried to track Neil van Skolkvik down for an interview, but were unsuccessful. According to media reports, he denied ever meeting with Saddam Make in 2001.

• 16:30Roman Mars?

  In interviews, Van Skolkvik didn't claim to be the inventor of the vuvuzela, but he and his company assert that they did popularise it. Their version of the horn was cheaper and safer in that you couldn't beat someone up with one.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Actually, Roman, you technically could beat someone up with it.

• 16:46Roman Mars?

  Right. It would just, it wouldn't hurt as bad.

• 16:49Speaker 06

  Well, look, you know, we were at the forefront of developing the first plastic version of a tin horn that used to be used in...

• 16:58Speaker 05

  Football here in South Africa. And because, you know, those horns were quite unsafe at the time. We saw the gap in the market to produce a plastic version of that horn.

• 17:11Roman Mars?

  Initially, Van Skolkvik's company also struggled to sell their vuvuzelas. But that changed when they started to focus on the marketing.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  The company handed out vuvuzelas for free at football matches and partnered with some local clubs to get more of them into South Africa's stadiums. It wasn't long before there was more interest in the vuvuzela and sales started to grow. Soon, the instrument could be distinctly heard at games across the country.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks very much, Rob. Indeed, the second half about to get underway. Stanton Fredericks on for Jose Macabro. So that's the change the Chiefs have made.

• 17:45Roman Mars?

  The vuvuzela effectively being a generic horn meant that Van Skolkvik wasn't able to patent the design. But the word vuvuzela was unique, so his company got a trademark for the name.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  And as South Africa prepared their bid to host the 2010 World Cup, Van Skolkvik and his company were ready to capitalize on the event.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  The company's efforts were designed to position the vuvuzela as authentic, including its official slogan, "The Original Sound of South Africa."

• 18:14Roman Mars?

  They recognized that there was a marketing opportunity in having the vuvuzela in the hands of important South African footballing officials, but also politicians that were trying to drum up support both locally and internationally for South Africa. So what you saw was things like the gifting of vuvuzelas as diplomatic gifts on local stages, politicians were handed vuvuzelas, et cetera. When FIFA announced South Africa's winning bid to host the tournament, the joyful celebrations included these plastic vuvuzelas.

• 18:48Speaker 03

  The aggressive marketing worked. In the lead up to the World Cup, the sound of South African football was inextricably linked to the vuvuzela. The instrument even appeared in national marketing campaigns, fronted by prominent rugby players who'd been called in to promote the 2009 Confederations Cup, a sort of test run tournament for the World Cup.

• 19:12Speaker 03

  We're behind the FIFA Confederations Cup.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  The Confederations Cup was the first time a global TV audience had been exposed to the vuvuzela. Not long after the first game, the international debate started taking off.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  One thing that I found, I don't know if I'm the only person, I found excruciating was this constant droning. Oh, yeah. That is going on. They're blowing these like trumpet looking horns. I don't know how they have enough air in their lungs. And it never ends. Yeah, yeah. And it is just saying, it is like you are being attacked by a swarm of locusts for 90 consecutive minutes. I know exactly what you're talking about. How can they constantly do that? I don't know. I don't know if they take turns, but it is.

• 19:55Roman Mars?

  Media reports were quick to raise concerns about the vuvuzela's potential impact on the World Cup.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Setbladder, the beloved and totally non-controversial FIFA president, was asked if the vuvuzela was going to be banned at the upcoming World Cup. To the surprise of many, he came out in support of the instrument, saying, "It is African culture. We are in Africa, and we have to allow them to practice their culture as much as they want to." Here's journalist Mark Gleason again.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  It struck me at that point that that was the turning moment, because I do think it was a bit of an issue for FIFA, whether the vuvuzela was going to be part of the 2010 World Cup or not. It's a moment I remember very distinctly and thinking to myself, this is the vuvuzela now. We will have the vuvuzela in 2010.

• 20:41Roman Mars?

  From the moment the World Cup kicked off, the vuvuzela was a constant and persistent presence. From the atmosphere in the stadiums to the jokes on late-night TV, it was inescapable.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  While broadcasters were trying to mitigate the noise on their end, DIY solutions were making their way around the internet. One of them involved writing your TV's audio through your computer and using software to remove the particular frequencies of the vuvuzela.

• 21:06Roman Mars?

  And as the tournament continued, players on the field cited the vuvuzela for causing communication problems. Lionel Messi, regarded by many as the best player in the world, even went so far as to blame the noise for his team conceding a goal.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  The complaints were even enough to inspire a study from the South African Medical Journal. It measured the vuvuzela's sound levels, which peaked at 131 decibels. That's as loud as a jackhammer or a jet engine. It concluded that prolonged or regular exposure could cause noise-induced hearing loss.

• 21:38Roman Mars?

  There was no middle ground with the vuvuzela. You either loved it or hated it.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Most of the vuvuzela outrage came from a very Eurocentric perspective. It was an argument about what was considered appropriate in football fan culture, which Dwayne Jethro says was an attack on the idea of African-ness.

• 21:56Speaker 04

  It raises old, old ideas of Africa as a dark continent. Cultural forms from Africa as being primitive or outdated, et cetera. And I think that's how the outrage was received in South Africa. And it was in that space that not only the South African Football Association, but also South African fans started to speak back and speak out and to say that this is how we represent ourselves in our sporting traditions and sporting fan culture.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  While the vuvuzela was condemned by international audiences, it's also true that many visitors to South Africa embraced it. For comedian Trevor Noah and plenty of other South Africans, the appropriation was the problem.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  In South Africa, we should have a thing where you have to have a licence to blow vuvuzela. You can't just come here not knowing vuvuzela etiquette, blowing it randomly. The English fans, the Spanish fans, middle of the day, there they are, 9am. What are you doing? It's so much fun. It's wrong. It's the wrong people. You know who should be blowing vuvuzelas? Qualified, skilled practitioners. Chiefs and Pirates supporters, that's who should be blowing vuvuzelas.

• 23:05Roman Mars?

  There is no doubt that for thousands of South Africans, the vuvuzela was an expression of national identity. But as the first African nation to host the World Cup, the instrument came to represent more than just South Africa.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  For viewers watching around the world, it represented the sound of an entire continent, and that was by design. FIFA and South Africa's organising committee marketed the tournament as Africa's World Cup. The slogan was "Celebrate Africa's Humanity". Even the official song of the tournament, which you'll surely remember, proclaims "This time is for Africa".

• 23:43Speaker 03

  And because the vivuzela became such a huge focal point of the event, Peter Rilegi says the instrument got wrapped up in all the iconography of the tournament too.

• 23:53Speaker 06

  The government was keen on using it because it's cited as a symbol of, you know, Africanness. But there were also other African visitors who hated it, who said, you know, we have no tradition of horn blowing. Where I come from, so how is this supposed to represent Pan-Africanism?

• 24:11Speaker 03

  The Disneyfication of the tournament made the vivuzela feel cheap, like the rest of the marketing around it. And with that cheapness came a certain skepticism about its authenticity.

• 24:22Roman Mars?

  Despite the instrument being so criticised, people still wanted to claim credit for its existence. The disputes over its history and origin played out side by side with the tournament.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  One story the press picked up connected the vivuzela to the horn of the kudu, a species of antelope.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Historically, animal horns have been used in South African culture. But the theory linking the kudu horn to the vivuzela was likely inspired by one supporter of the team Mamelodi Sundowns, who is known to bring the horn to football games. Here's researcher Dwayne Jethro again. While it is absolutely true that we have indigenous traditions of horn blowing in South Africa, whether and how we can trace the genealogy of the vivuzela all the way back to those indigenous traditions, that's open to argument and debate. Another claim came from the Nazareth Baptist Church, also known as the Shembe, who have a horn of their own. The Shembe church operates in the Kuzulu Natal area. They have an annual pilgrimage

• 25:27Speaker 03

  and during this annual pilgrimage, they use a horn called the Izibomu.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  When football fans were blowing the vivuzela, they felt that the Holy Spirit that was generated by them.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  Had been appropriated in this context of football atmosphere.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  The Shembe first accused Saddam Markey of appropriating the Isambomu. They said he visited the church in the 90s and fashioned his own version in plastic when he wasn't allowed to bring the metal horn into stadiums. Saddam denies these accusations. The church threatened legal action initially against FIFA and World Cup organisers before going after Neil Van Skulkvik and his company. According to media reports at the time, the two parties eventually came to a settlement.

• 26:23Roman Mars?

  All these claims regarding the origin of the Vuvuzela are compelling in their own way, but it was the heightened context of the World Cup tournament that raised the stakes in the ownership debate.

• 26:34Speaker 04

  In all cultural heritage debates, origins and ownership are really important elements and strands of being able to claim a certain heritage tradition. You cannot claim a heritage tradition until you can claim ownership and a valid persuasive origin story.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Despite the lack of a straightforward origin story, the Vuvuzela is still considered cultural heritage, at least in the eyes of some institutions. The United Kingdom's National Football Museum and the British Museum both have Vuvuzelas in their collections.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  So if we use the collecting principles of these heritage institutions as a guideline for how heritage is staked and made, then you see the Vuvuzela entering into that heritage narrative.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  I mean, the British Museum is no stranger to stealing credit for cultural artefacts. But if you look up the Vuvuzelas listing on their website, there is only one origin story they recognise.

• 27:35Speaker 07

  For me, to talk about this Vuvuzela, you make my day.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  They attribute the invention to none other than Freddie Saddam Markey.

• 27:44Speaker 07

  You make my dream come true. I'm feeling grateful because Vuvuzela is my baby.

• 27:50Speaker 03

  Saddam's story is the closest thing the Vuvuzela has to an actual origin story. And unlike the noise that surrounded the Vuvuzela in 2010, his story at its core is simple. He loved his team and he wanted to show his support for them as loud as possible.

• 28:05Roman Mars?

  Today, vuvuzelas aren't nearly as prominent as they were back in 2010. A few years after the South African World Cup ended, FIFA turned around and banned them from all major tournaments. And several other major sports leagues have as well. But for Dwayne Jethro, that comes with a silver lining.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  I'm very glad that no future World Cup tournament will be blessed with the beautiful sound of the vuvuzela, that the sound will always remain South African.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  Just a few months ago, the South African women's football team won their first ever Africa Cup of Nations. When the team arrived at the airport, they were greeted by fans expressing their national pride through songs and chants. Saddam Marke was there too, blowing his vuvuzela. There were no complaints about the noise. The fans just celebrated the way they wanted to celebrate.

• 29:23Roman Mars?

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• 30:03Roman Mars?

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• 31:43Roman Mars?

  So I'm back with James Parkinson and you've got another story about football culture in South Africa for us.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  Yes. So a few other interesting details came up while I was working on this story. And it has to do with that culture of noise making in the stadiums. And I'm dropping you a picture now so you can see what I'm talking about.

• 32:02Roman Mars?

  So this must be Saddam Maake, who we heard from in the piece, who has a really great voice and a really great look to go with it.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  Yes, this is Saddam of Vivazella fame. And in this picture, he's decked out in all this gear, screaming his lungs out at a football match.

• 32:16Roman Mars?

  He's wearing really large, comically yellow glasses and a helmet with all these different logos on it. And I see stickers of Kaiser Chiefs and even Orlando Pirates on it.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Yes, so what I want to talk about is that helmet, the Makarapa, because that was another item like the Vivazella that gained popularity during the World Cup. So the word Makarapa actually means scrapers. And scrapers is a reference to the migrant workers who used to move into cities like Johannesburg to work in the mines. People would say they scrape for a living. And so the story goes that a Kaiser Chiefs fan, not Saddam this time, went to a particularly rowdy game back in the 70s where he saw someone get hit in the head with a bottle. So naturally for the next game, he thought, you know, I just.

• 33:01Roman Mars?

  Well, I should, I should wear that helmet.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 33:04Roman Mars?

  All these people wearing helmets, I should wear a helmet, yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Yep, so this fan started painting these helmets in the team's colors and selling them at games, and it became a thing. But this isn't the only connection between the mines of South Africa and noise making in the stadiums. Dwayne Jethro told me there's also this sound. It's a kind of alarm. It's a wind up alarm. It goes.

• 33:28Roman Mars?

  Like an old air raid siren.

• 33:30Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah. And these alarms used to have this very specific use. It was the sound miners would hear for their shift change at work. So fans would, you know, bring these handheld sirens to make noise at the games, and they were pretty popular in the 90s.

• 33:42Roman Mars?

  Yeah, because these are working class fans, so they're bringing what they have on them. They're bringing their helmets, they're bringing their sirens that they use in everyday life.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were picking up their helmets and, you know, these alarms and sort of repurposing them to reflect their lives as miners in the culture of South African football.

• 33:59Roman Mars?

  Oh, I love that. I love that.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, and one of my favorite examples of this is that they repurposed a work song they would sing in the mines that fans would then sing loudly at games. And it's called Shosha Loza.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  And you sing it, it goes something like, shoso loza, uzé zutaba, stumela, sumela, de ma lena na. I don't know the words properly, but that's how the rolling beat goes. It's the kind of song that you sing when you really wanna rouse up the crowd and South Africans across the board know the song. And it speaks to migrants moving from different parts of Southern Africa to come and work on the mines.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  So, shoso loza, this traditional miner's song, actually became quite popular in the 90s. People refer to it as South Africa's second national anthem. It was sung in a call and response style by the workers to kind of, you know, generate a rhythm and also to alleviate stress from working long, hard days underground. Shoso loza means go forward or make the way for the next man. And famously, Nelson Mandela spoke about how he would sing this song while he was imprisoned on Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, along with, you know, many other political prisoners. And the ways in which the song reflected the struggle during apartheid.

• 35:26Roman Mars?

  Hmm. I mean, it reminds me of something that you mentioned in the piece, that, you know, these games and the noise that, you know, surrounds them. I mean, yes, it's about, you know, sports and a game and about leisure and fun, but it's also like a certain amount of political resistance just built into the fact that there's people singing along loudly in a stadium, they're playing instruments, and there's this way to make noise for your team, but also, you know, let the powers that be know that, you know, we're all here and there's a bunch of us and we're all here.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're here and, you know, we're really loud and we're gonna, we're gonna let you know.

• 36:10Roman Mars?

  Well, thank you again, James. I mean, this was such a cool, fascinating history and I'm so glad that you shared it with us.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  Thanks, Armin. Anytime.

• 36:25Roman Mars?

  That story originally aired in 2022. It was produced by James Parkinson and edited by Jason DeLeón, mixed by Martin Gonzalez, music by Swan Real, with additional music provided by Freddie Saddam Make. Fact checking by Graham Heisha. Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Lashma Dawn, Vivian Le, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason, Talon and Rain Stradly, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building in beautiful Uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our own Discord server.

• 37:10Roman Mars?

  There's a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.