Bafana not good enough in the end

By Robin Toskin

Bafana Bafana stormed the Bastille as South African newspapers had advised them with their fans on tow singing: "Thiba kamona, thiba kamona," (close this side, close all sides) "Rebolaye ntja tsena," (To kill this dog). They did kill the ‘dog’ on Tuesday, but not dead enough.

The brief, however, was for Bafana Bafana to flatten the French castle that historians say held common criminals; forgers, embezzlers, swindlers etc.

The advice by the Star newspaper could not have been more apt as France headed into the must-win clash with their fans crying that they had been swindled of Cup glory by under-currents that bubbled out as a mutiny on Sunday.

Prior to the match, the much-maligned French coach Raymond Domenech had stunned a press conference by saying he did not know who would make his squad to face South Africa in their last Group A match of the 2010 World Cup.

South Africans were, too, pre-occupied with their own fate, that needed overrunning of the Bastille — the spot where the French revolution begun on July 14, 1879.

The famous revolution started at 3.30pm, but South Africa’s assault begun half an hour later at Free State Stadium in Bloemfontein. Across the breadth and length of Mzansi Afrika, in Fan Parks, Shebeens, sports clubs South Africans came out in numbers — armed not with assegais, but the famed vuvuzelas and a tune at heart to urge on Bafana.

song and dance

It was a match they could afford to watch with both eyes as one had to be in Bafokeng Kingdom approximately 200km North West of Johannesburg where Mexico were slugging it out with Uruguay in Rustenburg.

At Thokoza Fan Park in Soweto, like everywhere else in the Rainbow Nation, it was song and dance before the match interrupted briefly by the belting of France national anthem, "La Marseillaise" and Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrica.

The fans at the park, a minute fraction of 49-million expectant nation were in commune with the rest as they belted out the famous Shosholoza song. As expected, Bafana Bafana got off the blocks fast with goals from Bongani Khumalo and Katlego Mphela, raising the hopes of a nation above the crest of disgraced Les Blues.

But as it has been with Bafana, they let off the hook France when they had Bastille all surrounded. Though besieged, Florent Malouda stuck out the Grenadier a Cheval de la Garde sword used by Napoleon’s Imperial Army to deflate South Africa’s hopes of making it to the knockout stage.