The Diary of a Reluctant Management Consultant

The vuvuzela - the reason why I'll be taking a pair of ear plugs and a taser to the World Cup games

I have no doubt that many of you dear readers are serious-minded, rational, focused businessmen and women that are finding this whole World Cup thing to be a distraction at best and an immense productivity drain at worst. If you went to the bank at 15:00 last Friday afternoon, I doubt you would have found anyone to greet you, let alone help you. Now, I know that this is very similar to your usual Friday afternoon banking experience, but look on the bright side, at least the queues were shorter. FIFA and the South African government assure us that the World Cup isn’t just some frivolous soccer tournament meant to fill the coffers of FIFA and the South African government, but rather it will be a boon to the local economy. So far all the economic benefits that I’ve seen are the following:

• If there is one thing overseas visitors are going to remember about South Africa is that innocuous looking plastic horn called the vuvuzela. They will remember it because it will be the cause of their inevitable deafness. The urge to support your team with a monotone vuvuzela drone will have certainly put some money in the pockets of horn manufacturers, traffic light vendors and ear specialists.
• An unintended consequence of the vuvuzela is the rocketing demand for ear plugs. My local chemist is sold out, but fortunately my armed cousin tells me a little known secret: gun shops and shooting ranges still have stock. Another unintended, but fortunate consequence of our high crime rate.
• Face paint manufacturers from China are smiling simply because there are six different colours in the South African flag. That’s a lot of face paint. Don’t forget, for large surfaces, use a roller. The global supply of orange face paint is also finished as the Dutch have bought it all.
• I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the enormous benefit that the five, spectacular new stadiums will bring to the country. We’ve already managed to squeeze out a couple of National Geographic “Megastructures” programs. And let’s not forget the hundreds of Rands to be made from the cable car going over the Moses Mabhida Stadium. It remains to be seen if Africa’s Big Five will now include a few white elephants.
• Vast improvements have been made to our roads. Some of these improvements include fixing them, as opposed to just putting up a sign that warns of pot holes. Previously the average Joburger would be frustrated in just three lanes of stagnant traffic. But thanks to the upgrading of the highways we can now be frustrated in four lanes of stagnant traffic.
• Tourism dollars are pouring in! We fully expect the number of tourists to be attacked by wildlife to increase. Just because you saw the Lion King doesn’t mean real lions are as wise and as well spoken as Mufasa. They’ll still eat you… as they did the Taiwanese tourist from a couple of years back, who stepped out of his vehicle to give his wife a biscuit!
• 20,000 people at the Sandton fan park – that’s a lot of portable toilets! Turns out there’s money to be made in poo!
• Thanks to World Cup, economists are being kept busy, desperately trying to calculate the economic benefits of the World Cup.

South Africa, found rather cunningly at the southern end of Africa

With only four sleeps to go until the start of the Soccer World Cup, tourists from all over the world are making their way to South Africa, eager to follow their teams through this beautiful country of ours. But South Africa is not your regular, run-of-the-mill-we-have-public-transport-and-electricity countries. So, as a service to all the visitors arriving this week, here are my top tips for the month ahead:

• The name of our country, South Africa, is quite a clever little clue indicating exactly where you can find us, i.e. the southern bit of Africa. This tip is particularly for the American I met on the plane in February who, when I said I was from South Africa wanted to know “so, where in Africa would I find that?” The southern part, I believe.
• South Africa is a big country, roughly about three times the size of Germany. We have game parks the size of England. Thus, our cities aren’t all within an hour’s driving distance. In fact, with the traffic, even the cities that are within an hour’s driving distance aren’t an hour apart!
• It’s winter in South Africa. Most photographs or short, promotional videos of South Africa always have us basking in the African sunshine, frolicking in oceans and barbecuing with people of different races. This is true for most of the year, but winter here can actually be quite cold. It snows in certain parts and the mercury drops to below freezing in several places, particularly overnight. So, if you’re going to an evening game in Johannesburg or even worse, Bloemfontein, you may want to wear something warm, unless you’re from Yorkshire, in which case a t-shirt will suffice.
• As private vehicles will be prevented from accessing the stadia (or ‘stadiums’ if you went to a government school), you will need to take a “park ‘n ride” bus or a minibus taxi to get to the game. Public transport here is not quite as organised as you might find it in your home country, so please do not be perturbed if your bus is late or if your taxi drives up a one way, hooting annoyingly at all the cars driving in the opposite, but correct, direction. Rather conveniently though, taxis will stop to pick you up on the side of a five lane highway.
• When South Africans tell you we have robots at every major intersection, it’s not that we’ve automated everything, it’s because we call traffic lights ‘robots’. We don’t know why either. They don’t normally work.
• ‘Now’, ‘just now’ and ‘now now’ are all used interchangeably, and contrary to what you might think, none of them mean ‘immediately’ but rather refer to some arbitrary time in the future, anywhere between now and next Thursday.
• Beware soccer hooligans: the South African Police does not have a reputation for having a kind and caring approach for dealing with unruly behaviour. They have guns and use them regularly, sometimes even for police-related matters.
• South Africa’s real treasure is that great man Nelson Mandela. If you’d like to take in some of Nelson Mandela’s “Madiba Magic”, please feel free to take Nelson Mandela Drive, go across the Nelson Mandela Bridge, shop at Nelson Mandela Square, visit Nelson Mandela Bay and catch a show at the Nelson Mandela Theatre.
• We use the metric system, so please beware. When the speed limit on highway says 120, that’s kilometres per hour rather than miles per hour. We also drive on the right side of the road, i.e. the left, unless of course you’re in the aforementioned minibus taxi in which case you might find yourself going at 120 miles per hour on the wrong side of the road. Welcome to South Africa. Please enjoy your stay!