The last and final part to my very active weekend (really just Friday and Saturday) was the Kaizer Chiefs soccer game. Let me just start out this piece by saying, although I had fun, I am still a little frustrated about what happened at the game, and it may come out on my paper here. We finally arrived at the game having found a taxi with some of the nicest people packed inside of it all going to the game. The driver willingly held our overnight bags for us until the end of the game where we could receive them again. So far so good, I was feeling excited about seeing the game and was ready to cheer.
Let me preface this by explaining how the seating is done in South Africa and the Peter Makaba stadium. There are two types of tickets 80 Rand tickets and 50 Rand tickets. 80 Rand gets you a seat number closer to the field and 50 Rand allows you to sit where-ever you want higher up (or so we were told). We arrived at the stadium going towards our seats when we were told to climb these stairs, when we reached the top we were told to turn around because our seats were not in that section. We finally found are section and upon trying to climb the very crowded stairs we were stopped and yelled at by a security guard. I tried to explain to him that our seats were there and show him the tickets but he yelled “I don’t care” and then proceeded to try to push us back down the stairs. Now that he had put his hands on us, my ever feisty friend Mary started yelling at him in sepedi, I was yelling in English “well if you can’t help us find our seat than find us another seat” but he continued to push us. In many ways we were lucky that the stairs were so crowded because we fell back onto people instead of down the stairs.
About 20 minutes into the first half we just decided to sit on the stairs in our section to watch the rest of the first half. While sitting there other people were like, oooh that stinks you have an 80 Rand ticket and we only paid 50. These comments just made me angrier and I said to Mary, I am going to go talk to someone and started to get up, but she pulled me back and said it wouldn’t make any difference. I was furious, and my first American instinct was to complain to whoever I could so that they would find us a seat, but the security guards there just didn’t care.
During the second half we found someone else’s empty seats, of which Mary said that we should leave because we didn’t want to get into a fight with anyone, but I kept saying just wait, to tired to move anymore. Luckily Mary happened to know one of the boys sitting in the seats and they agreed to sit somewhere else and let us have the seats. It was at this point that I had the most fun, getting into the game and singing along with everyone. The atmosphere at a South African soccer game is really something else, people sing in unison to encourage the boys to make a goal, and soon the whole stadium is singing the same song. It is truly one of the most magical things ever to experience, and apparently it helped, because they finally scored a goal and won!
We had found some seats, made it through the game, and had experienced a South African game. I had learned that “having a seat” means something different in the US than in South Africa. However, this did not keep me from complaining via email when I got back. I spoke with the head of security and the owner of the Kaizer Chiefs about what happened. The head of security is including me in discussions for changing the system next time and the Owner of the Kaizer Chiefs sent me an apology letter.
However, at the end of the day I am still rooting for the Kaizer Chiefs to kick some soccer butt. GO KAIZER CHIEFS!
