Ostracise Stigmatize Destroy

The title of this post is plagiarised from the prescient words of our sweet but controversial friend Andile.

I’ve noticed that while competition encourages fantastic feats of human achievement, it tends to polarise people and bring out the worst in human behaviour. It is the dark side of competition, ruthlessness and such, which stimulate my inquiry lobes. My favourite motivator, especially in sporting competitions, is fear. Fear of ridicule specifically. That’s why I like Emily so much. With a simple, yet damning insult, she turned a friendly game of soccer into serious competition.

But first let me explain the event:

In the spirit of Col. Ojukwu and Lt. Col. Gowon - the respective leaders of the opposing sides in the Biafran civil war in Nigeria – who called a 48 hour cease-fire in 1967 in order to watch Pele play an exhibition match in Lagos, in that spirit of undying love of the beautiful game (joga bonita™). We dragged our tired, babalaas, bodies out of bed and onto the street for a Sunday afternoon soccer match. Not exactly soccer, we played drie pal, one of the million variations of diski – that greatest of South African soccer traditions. The game consists of individuals attempting to manipulate the ball around the defensive manoeuvres of their opponents and score by hitting a single upturned brick with the ball. Once you’ve done that you’re knocked out, a sort of winner takes nothing game.

An important part of diski is the ball - a small round, deflated mini soccer ball. It is part of a tradition which has its roots in coca cola’s strange practice of flooding South African townships with billions of the little deflated coke branded things in the 80’s and 90’s.

Anyway the point of our game was not to win anything, but to use the ball which had been sitting in disco’s house for the greater part of the year. This was all well and good until Emily, in that uniquely British way of politely dropping a bomb said “whoever looses is a shithead” or something like that. Now that doesn’t seem like such a damning prospect but its implications completely changed the dynamic of the game, the point now was to not loose, the spectre of ridicule was let loose upon the street and everyone upped their game. I understand the implications of being called a shit head don’t seem to be that bad of a deal, except if you have friends who suck. The type of small minded people who will find a deep satisfaction in calling you shithead for the rest of your life, the type of people who find self realisation in perfecting the tswana art of the gwarra consciously laughing (howling) at every half baked joke and immature mention of your new name: shithead. Pumped up on Andile’s philospophical musings we played our hearts out, taking the game right down to penalties.

One day one day there was disco, then someone shat in his hat, then he put it on, then he was a…