IT’S BEEN A MONTH OF NOISE in South Africa and elsewhere around the world where football is played and enjoyed – thanks to modern technology. An “ancient African tradition”, some testify, that goes all the way back to 2009, irritated many more ears than it pleased.It was a case, clearly, of unintended consequences. Since noise is now de rigueur at every village cockfight, a plastic horn called the vuvuzela, designed to make noise at intervals, such as when one’s team scores a goal, suddenly became a source of non-stop racket.Today is the final of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and millions will breathe a sigh of relief. But not for long. Like a virus, the vuvuzela is already on its way around the world.A week after the noise began, The Nation printed my letter in which I wondered who would be the first person to introduce that plastic hornto Barbados. Two days later it had arrived, packaged with fast food.
TinnitusTomorrow, as thousands leave Johannesburg, Durban, Pretoria, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Rustenburg and other cities with vuvuzelas in their luggage, many would be well advised to make appointments with ear, nose and throat specialists about that ringing in their ears. It’s known as tinnitus.As I watched from this distance, I wondered why it never occurred to anyone who objected to the noise to acquire about a dozen vuvuzelas, affix the logo of a FIFA non-approved product – Pepsi or Nike perhaps – and leave them in the stadium at the end of a game.Faster than the speed of Ronaldo and Robben combined, FIFA’s head honcho Sepp Blatter, always quick to seize the opportunity to portray himself as champion of the underdog, and who had ordered: “We should not try to Europeanise an African World Cup”, would have issued an instant edict banning the horn.
Swarm of killer beesA single vuvuzela makes the sound of a braying jackass in heat; a stadium-full is a swarm of killer bees searching for their queen.Last April the South African Medical Journal reported that a vuvuzela blower would be absorbing about 106 decibels; the person sitting in the row in front could be hearing in excess of 122 decibels.There are several stories of the origin of the vuvuzela, such as the romantic version that it is the modern-day equivalent of the traditional curved horn made from the antlers of the kudu, a member of the deer family. But the Chinese, masters of mass-production, assert that they are the inventors. A plastic factory owner in Beijing says his company started manufacturing the horns in 2001 and had tried to market them but demand was not that high. They tried to get them into the 2006 World Cup in Germany but they failed. It was only when they tried again this year in South Africa that they found a huge market for the noise-makers. The South Africans took instantly to the trumpets.
Simplistic absurdityBeings on other planets must wonder how an intelligent species that once sent 12 men to the moon – American astronaut Alan Shepard even played a round of golf up there – could come up with such simplistic absurdity. Brace for more noise, folks – the Chinese are producing 20 000 vuvuzelas every day!So the games have ended. They have demonstrated the malleability of the human brain and its ability to tolerate torture. Protesters soon gave up. That perhaps explains why some folks at Clapham can accommodate, and even grow to enjoy, 20 noisy Friday night Pork Limes. Unfortunately not all can. The organisers should have sympathy for the Armstrongs’ three-month-old baby and the effect their noise is having on his young life. But who cares? Entertainment comes first.As Barbadians cast about for “innovation and entrepreneurship”, if we must make noise, instead of importing thousands of vuvuzelas, why not start blowing conch shells? They’re more attractive. Anything but all that poisonous plastic in our drinking water.Carl Moore was the first Editor of THE NATION and is a social commentator.
