For the Dutch and their South African cousins, a sad day
The Dutch man in the vivid orange hat raised his vuvuzela high in the air, put it to his lips and blew as hard as he could.
No sound came out.
As he stood in a suburban shopping mall restaurant waiting for the World Cup final between the Netherlands and Spain to begin, the man tried again. And again.
Eventually, he produced a respectable flatulent blast from the plastic instrument. But his initial failure — and the equally flat performance of his favorite team’s offense — were emblematic of the sad ending Sunday night for the scads of Dutch expats and Afrikaners who watched their hopes crushed by Spain’s 1-0 victory as they nibbled on boerenkool met worst (mashed vegetables with smoked sausage) and, yes, bitterballen (fried meatballs).
The game Sunday had special meaning for some here because of history. South Africa was settled by the Dutch when the area was administered by the Dutch East India Company; thousands of Boers, or Dutch settlers, eventually trekked inland to escape British rule and established their own settlements.
Truth be told, many descendants of the Boers remain bored, or worse, by soccer. For Afrikaners, rugby — the game traditionally played by whites — is their true love. Soccer has been seen as a black game in South Africa, with few white supporters before the World Cup.
Yet during the monthlong tournament, many here Sunday night said they had supported the South African team until its first-round defeat and were only now rooting for the Netherlands — the Afrikaners, because of the affinity they feel to Holland with their Dutch settler roots, and Dutch expats because of their former ties to their homeland.
Walking into the eatery nicknamed Holland House was like turning on a television with bad color distortion, everything glowing orange.
Men wore orange boas and traditional ladies’ bonnets. Women wore tight orange miniskirts produced by a Dutch beer company.
Arie Basch, a South African wearing an orange cap, said he still prefers rugby but followed the soccer tournament avidly. “South Africa is my team. My second team is Holland, all the way.
“Rugby is the game I was brought up with. But I love soccer because it’s uniting the country. I’ll be honest, anything that unites the country, I’m for. We need this. If we had a world cup in netball, I’d go and see it,” he said.
As yellow cards littered the game like autumn leaves, the Netherlands supporters took to cheering free kicks, for want of goals to shout about.
At halftime, with no goals scored, Dutch emigrant Jacob Molenaar, 36, an engineer, was shaking his head.
“It’s tough. I think the fittest team is going to win.”
Watching Holland play a World Cup final in his second homeland, South Africa, was a “dream come true,” Molenaar said. For some Afrikaners, carrying the collective stigma of apartheid, and alienated by government affirmative action policies to promote black South Africans, the World Cup was a chance to bury that painful history and feel a part of their country.
“The original Dutchmen who came here didn’t have any wrong intentions. They just wanted to find their own homeland. Then things went pear-shaped,” said Molenaar. “People were branded as racists, and they’re not. I’ve got white family here and they were crying at the opening ceremony because they were saying it was the first time they could feel proud as South Africans.”
As the Dutch missed one particularly vital scoring opportunity, Molenaar threw himself onto the floor in anguish. At the end though, he acknowledged, the Spaniards had played better.
“It’s sad,” he said.
As the game wore on, another Dutch emigrant, Carmen Tecklenburg, began shouting about the referee. That referee — the one from Britain — was picking on her team, she emphasized.
In the end, said Tecklenburg, who runs a tourist lodge with her husband, the most striking thing about South Africa’s World Cup tourney (apart from Holland making the final) was the refreshing sense of unity it gave her adopted country.
“The Dutch team making the final, obviously, was the most amazing thing. And then the country being so unified was great. I think South Africa has shown what a wonderful country it is to the world.”
