First impressions: The dreaded vuvuzelas droning everywhere. And the myths about these plastic horns being “tradition” continue.  And people defend the vuvuzelas  even when it is clear it is not good for their health.  I could not help notice the flags on cars. No surprises that the South African flag dominates. From the suburbs to the townships. England (largely because of the popularity of the English Premier League and South Africans, especially local whites,’ sense of cultural inferiority to things from there) gets a lot of support. A large Portuguese community, mostly descendants of immigrants who left newly independent Mozambique and Angola for Apartheid South Africa in the 1970s, live here. Many run small businesses serving the townships, so Portuguese flags pop up. But also because Deco, Cavalho and Ricardo Pereira all play at Chelsea Football Club. Again, English football. Then there are those fans have done the smart thing and have two flags: South Africa and Argentina or Brazil (who, by the way, is the stand in team for “team representing the Black World or the Third World”) and then there’s Italy for a generation who remembers 1982 and brought up on Serie A of the late 1980s and early 1990s. These people are also just realistic in their quest to back a winner.

Tonight I watched the Kickoff Concert on TV.  I was expecting the worst. Shakira wore a grass skirt for the African World Cup. Get it. She tried speaking  a bit of Zulu (“Ngiyabonga mZantsi” – thank you South Africa – though it came out as “my zansi”) and shook her hips.

Oh, and Desmond Tutu, who appeared excited to be out this late, said some nonsense about South Africa being the “butterfly nation.”

The best part of watching the World Cup here is the commercials. (It is the stuff I research for a book I am trying to write on postapartheid media politics, so I am technically working)

The commercials for Vodacom, one of the two cell phone companies that have a monopoly on the local market, are built around some local TV characters and are clever and funny. (They’re all a play on the breakout hit, “Show Dem (Make the Circle Bigger),” and involve members of the national team, Bafana Bafana, doing the dance moves at every opportunity they get.

There is also some ridiculous ad playing on the imagined success of black economic empowerment or BEE. If you remember, that is the policy framework for how President Thabo Mbeki and his Cabinet wants to undo South Africa’s racial inequality (i.e. via aspirant racial capitalism). It’s for local beer Hansa. Watch for yourself. I bet some local black business people would tell a different story about how BBE really works.

Remember the Castle Lite (a local beer brand; well, Castle is the beer monopoly down here) ad with Vanilla Ice. Now it is MC Hammer’s turn.  (BTW, South African beer commercials have become a lucrative side job for aging American entertainers. Remember, Lou Gossett Jr?)

The best worse thing I read or heard today: Danny Jordaan, the head of the local organizing committee, at a press briefing on the world’s media, previewing the opening game between South Africa and Mexico in Johannesburg, which I will watch on TV with my parents as I am in Cape Town: “We can guarantee the noisiest World Cup ever.” This will be okay if people watching from around the world would hear our football songs, but instead they’ll hear buzzing plastic horns. I can’t.

My friend, Herman Wasserman, articulates better how South African public (specifically, media) debate about anything their new government does: “You see the headlines: ‘Race war’, ‘Bloodshed’, ‘Chaos’, ‘Plan B’, ‘Don’t do it’, ‘It’s not going to happen.’  And then … the celebration after … South Africans are late believers, but once they believe they are fanatical believers.”  Amen.

Oh, and follow me on Twitter, where I’ll be more active for the next few days.