The Horn That Divided the World Cup

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0:46Keep things fresh with organic red cherries, strawberries, and peaches at their peak. And stock up on bug sprays and sun care must-haves. Make your summer sizzle at Whole Foods Market. This is 99 % invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Every four years, dozens of football teams from around the world, that's the soccer kind of football for our American listeners, gather for a time-honored tradition, the World Cup. And every four years, millions of football fans from around the world gather for another time-honored tradition, being mad at the World Cup. Partly they're mad at the opposing teams, that's the fun kind of mad.

1:25But they're also mad at FIFA, the nakedly corrupt organization that runs the tournament. This year, the main reason to be mad at FIFA is for outrageous price gouging. Their new dynamic ticketing system, along with their blatantly self-dealing resale market, are causing ticket prices to skyrocket. The most expensive seats for the previous World Cup final were$1 ,600. When the first round of tickets for this year's final went on sale, the cheapest seats in the house started at a staggering$2 ,790. Then they more than doubled in later rounds. For those who missed the pre-sales, there's always FIFA's resale market, where they take a hefty 15 % cut from both buyers and sellers.

2:09Seats behind the goal for that final game were recently listed there for$2.3 million each. Last year also saw FIFA award a sycophantic peace prize to the sitting U.S. president. The lead-up to the 2022 tournament in Qatar had numerous human rights violations in the construction of the stadiums, reportedly leading to the deaths of hundreds of migrant workers. The cup before that was hosted by Russia in the wake of their annexation of Crimea. And in 2015, 11 FIFA officials were indicted for accepting over$150 million in bribes. So we thought we'd take you back to a comparatively quaint World Cup controversy from 2010.

2:48Plastic horns that were just too dang loud. Enjoy.

2:59In the spring of 2004, journalist Mark Gleason sat in the front row of a small conference room in Switzerland for a big announcement. There was a dramatic buildup. There was a lot of tension. Everyone was on edge. The winning bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup was about to be revealed, and South Africa was among the leading contenders. I mean, they had all the top guns go to Zurich for that particular announcement. Mandela was there, Bishop Tutu was there, the former president of Clack was there. South Africa wanted to be the first African nation to host the World Cup. They also wanted the tournament to be the start of a new chapter.

3:35During apartheid, the country was banned from the international sporting community. Now they were on the precipice of hosting soccer's biggest event. South Africans gathered in the streets of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban to await FIFA's decision. I discover it with you. The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be organized in South Africa.

4:03You know, South Africa had come full circle in the sense of its horrible past and how it had moved on from being a pariah state and was now, you know, hosting the biggest event in world sport and very much part of the international family. The celebrations that erupted that day in Zurich were full of cheers and whistles, but also one notorious sound that came to define South Africa's World Cup.

4:35The sound of the Vuvuzela.

4:43Back in 2004, nobody really talked about Vuvuzelas. Even people in the soccer world didn't know what they were. Reporter James Parkinson. But six years later, by the time the first game of the tournament was underway, the Vuvuzela was the hottest word in sports. The 2010 FIFA World Cup is ready for kickoff. And to the sound of 80 ,000 Vuvuzelas, Bafana Bafana. The Vuvuzela is a two-foot-long injection-moulded plastic horn. It plays only one note, a B-flat, and it gradually became a regular feature of South African soccer. But prior to the 2010 World Cup, the rest of the world had never heard anything quite like it.

5:27And a lot of people hated it. It's been likened to a giant swarm of angry hornets or a herd of distraught elephants. So loud in the stadium with the Vuvuzelas. It's ridiculous. It's not noisy. There's nothing irritating about it. There's nothing irritating. For fans watching abroad, the constant drone of a Vuvuzela wasn't what the beautiful game typically sounded like. European soccer games, or football games, are often characterized by songs and chants bellowed by the supporters.

6:07But the hum of 80 ,000 Vuvuzelas drowned out that type of crowd noise. The sound caused actual headaches for television broadcasters. French network TF1 opted to change their commentators' microphones for a kind that would reject more background noise. Other networks chose to use special audio filters to try and eliminate the Vivazella from their sound mix altogether. The controversy surrounding the Vivazella was hard to ignore. It drew attention away from the players on the field and placed the focus on the crowd in the stadiums. It also sparked a debate. about the history of the Vuvuzela and its true origins.

6:45For critics, the Vuvuzela was a relatively new, mass-produced noisemaker. But for supporters, they tended to think of the Vuvuzela as an instrument, a loud, attention-grabbing sound that grew out of South Africa's rich footballing tradition. In 1862, there's already documented matches that took place in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. That's South African football historian Peter Aleggi. And that is a year before the Football Association was even founded in England and before the first rules of association football were codified. Originally, the sport was introduced by British colonisers, seeking to impose their beliefs and values on the locals.

7:26But quickly, South Africans embraced football and made it their own. It's an interesting story whereby a colonial game really was transformed into a pillar of black culture by the racially oppressed. The game was both affordable and accessible, becoming the sport of the black working class. And when I use the term black, I'm referring to people who either are self-identified or were later classified under apartheid as African, Indian or South Asian, and coloured or multiracial. Football was not held in high regard by officials in the apartheid regime. Sports played predominantly by white South Africans like cricket and rugby were the ones that received political backing.

8:15So as a way to help organise themselves, football teams formed supporters clubs. These were small but mighty organisations made up of fans from each city or town. Supporters clubs would hold fundraisers and hammer out travel logistics to away matches. And black supporters clubs in particular played a special role, giving black South Africans who had no say in their government a voice to shape their community through the local team. Members held elections for various positions in the supporters club, and also through their formal organization, they tried to influence the football club's internal affairs.

8:53And so the ability to campaign for office to achieve a kind of social honor and visibility by achieving these high offices was something that was highly valued, particularly in Black communities. By the 1960s, supporter clubs existed all across South Africa, and they made their presence known through the noise they generated on game days at the stadium. The crowd had gone wild, just quietly as left for play, and as chief to the university too. Playing music at the grounds, chanting, singing, dancing, maybe insulting the opponents. This was something intensely pleasurable and entertaining. During this time, political opponents of the apartheid regime were banned from gathering.

9:43It was one of the many ways the government tried to suppress the liberation movement. But football games and the noise and crowd that came with them made it harder to prevent black politicians from sitting together. It provided cover in a way by allowing activists to have conversations and even organize particular subversive activities. And in doing so, kind of undermining the white state's surveillance and censorship. The stadiums were a sort of sanctuary, a place where you could get rowdy and thumb your nose at the government, where you could fly the flag of the anti-apartheid movement while rooting for your favorite team.

10:23It was also the place where you could hear one charismatic fan pick up his horn and make a sound that would soon be heard around the world. So myself, I'm an owner, I'm a founder, I'm a pioneer of the Vuvuzela. It just started by me. This is Freddie Marquet. They call me Mr. Vuvuzela when I walk around. Freddie actually prefers to be called Saddam, an edgy nickname he received during the Gulf War because he used to set off huge firecrackers at football matches. People would say it sounded like the Iraq War on TV. Saddam Markay is a soccer freak, or a superfan as they're known in South Africa, the most passionate of football supporters.

11:07He loves the South African national team and his local club, Kaiser Chiefs from Johannesburg. He can be seen at games wearing oversized yellow glasses, a jersey and a mining helmet known as a marker wrapper, painted in the team's colours. For Saddam, you might say football is life. My first wife divorced me because of soccer. I said, chips is my first wife. You're my second wife. Every day, every night, when I sleep, I sleep chips. I sleep soccer, eat soccer, talk soccer. I can't talk to you without talking about soccer. In between all the soccer chat, I did manage to learn where Saddam grew up, the province of Limpopo, with his large family.

11:49His claim to the Vuvuzela dates back to his childhood and a gift he received for his birthday in 1965. My brother called Solomon Maki. He bought me a bicycle. And that bicycle used to have a hooter. The hooter Saddam is referencing is a bicycle horn. That hooter, I've got it here.

12:14That is a bicycle hooter. He'd bring that horn to local football games to support his team, but instead of squeezing the little rubber bulb at the end, he'd take that off and blow into the horn.

12:27I was doing that one to entertain the players, motivate them, encourage them to score, and they said, I'm with this one. 1965 when I arrived in John Speck. Saddam liked the sound the detached bicycle horn made. He called it a palafala. When his local football club, the Kaiser Chiefs, was established in 1970, Saddam says he brought a number of other homemade horns to the game. This included a large aluminium horn he called a boogie blast. The boogie blast was basically a long metal stick you could blow into. It was also a long metal stick you could beat someone up with. So stadiums eventually banded.

13:04But by then, in 1989, Saddam says he met with a plastics manufacturer and asked him to make a plastic version of the boogie blast. This new instrument they created sounded similar.

13:18But it had a different name. I call it, this one, Vuvuzela. Vuvuzela is derived from Zulu. Vuvuzela means welcome and unite. Same thing, Vuvuzela, welcome and unite. Sadam says he coined the name Vuvuzela back in 1992, a claim he supports with photos of him blowing his many horns at football games in the 70s and 80s and a Vuvuzela in the 90s. He also recorded an album in 1999 titled Vuvuzela Cellular.

14:05Sadam tried selling some of these plastic horns at football matches, but it just never really gained traction. Even at Kaiser Chiefs games, he would often be one of the only supporters in the crowd blowing Avuvuzela. However, that slowly started to change when a company in Cape Town started mass-producing their own plastic horns, which they also called Avuvuzela. The company's name is Masin Kedahani Sports. The click is important because the name of the company is from Isikosa. This is Dwayne Jethro. He studies South African culture and wrote about the history of the Vuvuzela. Dwayne says that back in 2001, Nilvan Skalkvik and his partner Bevel Backman got funding to get their business off the ground.

14:50He pitched this idea of injection moulding a horn to a certain size and a certain specification that would be easily used at football matches. Around the same time this new company was getting started, Saddam Make says he approached Neil Van Skulkvik to tell him that he was the true inventor of the Vuvuzela. Saddam says he tried to strike a business deal. Did you ever speak with Neil? Neil Van... Yes, I speak to him. He promised me, each Vuvuzela, I'm going to get a five francs out of each Vuvuzela. And I never get even a cent. But I didn't worry. I didn't complain. I said to myself, God is great.

15:33We tried to track Neil van Skolkvik down for an interview, but were unsuccessful. According to media reports, he denied ever meeting with Saddam Marquet in 2001. In interviews, van Skolkvik didn't claim to be the inventor of the Vuvuzela, but he and his company assert that they did popularise it. Their version of the horn was cheaper and safer, in that you couldn't beat someone up with one. Actually, Roman, you technically could beat someone up with it. Right. It wouldn't hurt as bad. Well, look, you know, we were at the forefront of developing the first plastic version of a thin horn that used to be used in, you know, football here in South Africa.

16:15And because, you know, those horns were quite unsafe at the time, we saw the gap in the market to produce a plastic version of that horn. Initially, Van Skulkvik's company also struggled to sell their Vuvuzelas, but that changed when they started to focus on the marketing. The company handed out Vuvuzelas for free at football matches and partnered with some local clubs to get more of them into South Africa's stadiums. It wasn't long before there was more interest in the Vuvuzela and sales started to grow. Soon, the instrument could be distinctly heard at games across the country. Yeah, thanks very much, Rob.

16:52Indeed, the second half about to get underway. Stanton Fredericks on for Jose Macamo. So that's a change the Chiefs have made. The Vuvuzela effectively being a generic horn meant that Van Skolkvec wasn't able to patent the design. But the word Vuvuzela was unique, so his company got a trademark for the name. And as South Africa prepared their bid to host the 2010 World Cup, Van Skolkvec and his company were ready to capitalise on the event. The company's efforts were designed to position the Vuvuzela as authentic, including its official slogan, the original sound of South Africa. They recognised that there was a marketing opportunity in having the vuvuzela in the hands of important South African footballing officials, but also politicians that were trying to drum up support both locally and internationally for South Africa's bid.

17:42So what you saw was things like the gifting of vuvuzelas as diplomatic gifts on local stages, politicians were handed. Vuvuzelas, etc. When FIFA announced South Africa's winning bid to host the tournament, the joyful celebrations included these plastic Vuvuzelas. The aggressive marketing worked. In the lead-up to the World Cup, the sound of South African football was inextricably linked to the Vuvuzela. The instrument even appeared in national marketing campaigns, fronted by prominent rugby players, who'd been called in to promote the 2009 Confederations Cup, a sort of test-run tournament for the World Cup.

18:26We're behind the FIFA Confederations Cup. The FIFA Confederations Cup was the first time a global TV audience had been exposed to the Vivazella. Not long after the first game, the international debate started taking off. One thing that I found, I don't know if I'm the only person, I found excruciating was this constant droning that was going on. They're blowing these trumpet-looking horns. I don't know how they have enough air in their lungs. And it never ends. And it is like you are being attacked by a swarm of locusts for 90 consecutive minutes. I know exactly what you're talking about. How can they constantly do that?

19:05I don't know. I don't know if they take turns. Media reports were quick to raise concerns about the Vuvuzela's potential impact on the World Cup. Sepp Blatter, the beloved and totally non-controversial FIFA president, was asked if the Viva Zella was going to be banned at the upcoming World Cup. To the surprise of many, he came out in support of the instrument, saying it is African culture, we are in Africa, and we have to allow them to practice their culture as much as they want to. Here's journalist Mark Gleeson again. It struck me at that point that that was the turning moment, because I do think it was a bit of an issue for FIFA, whether the Vuvuzela was going to be part of the 2010 World Cup or not.

19:48It's a moment I remember very distinctly and thinking to myself, this is the Vuvuzela now. We will have the Vuvuzela in 2010. From the moment the World Cup kicked off, the Vuvuzela was a constant and persistent presence. From the atmosphere in the stadiums to the jokes on late night TV, it was inescapable. While broadcasters were trying to mitigate the noise on their end, DIY solutions were making their way around the internet. One of them involved writing your TV's audio through your computer and using software to remove the particular frequencies of the Vivazella. And as the tournament continued, players on the field cited the Vivazella for causing communication problems.

20:26Lionel Messi, regarded by many as the best player in the world, even went so far as to blame the noise for his team conceding a goal. The complaints were even enough to inspire a study from the South African Medical Journal. It measured the Vivazella's sound levels, which peaked at 131 decibels. That's as loud as a jackhammer or a jet engine. It concluded that prolonged or regular exposure could cause noise-induced hearing loss. There was no middle ground with the Vivazella. You either loved it or hated it. Most of the Vivazella outrage came from a very Eurocentric perspective. It was an argument about what was considered appropriate in football fan culture, which Duane Jethro says was an attack on the idea of Africanness.

21:10It raises old, old ideas of Africa as a dark continent, cultural forms from Africa as being primitive or outdated, etc. And I think that's how the outrage was received in South Africa. And it was in that space that not only the South African Football Association, but also South African fans started to speak back and speak out and to say that this is how we represent ourselves in our sporting traditions and sporting fan culture. While the Vuvuzela was condemned by international audiences, it's also true that many visitors to South Africa embraced it. For comedian Trevor Noah and plenty of other South Africans, the appropriation was the problem.

21:54In South Africa, we should have a thing where you have to have a license to blow Vuvuzela. You can't just come here not knowing Vuvuzela etiquette, blowing it randomly. The English fans, the Spanish fans, middle of the day, there they are, 9am. What are you doing? It's so much fun. It's wrong. It's the wrong people. You know who should be blowing vuvuzelas? Qualified, skilled practitioners. Chiefs and pirate supporters. That's who should be blowing vuvuzelas. There's no doubt that for thousands of South Africans, the vuvuzela was an expression of national identity. But as the first African nation to host the World Cup, the instrument came to represent more than just South Africa.

22:31For viewers watching around the world, it represented the sound of an entire continent, and that was by design. FIFA and South Africa's organising committee marketed the tournament as Africa's World Cup. The slogan was, celebrate Africa's humanity. Even the official song of the tournament, which you'll surely remember, proclaims this time is for Africa.

22:57And because the vivazella became such a huge focal point of the event, Peter Rileggi says the instrument got wrapped up in all the iconography of the tournament too. The government was keen on using it because it saw it as a symbol of, you know, African-ness. But there were also other African visitors who hated it, who said, you know, we have no tradition of horn blowing where I come from. So how is this supposed to represent pan-Africanism? The Disneyfication of the tournament made the Vivazella feel cheap, like the rest of the marketing around it. And with that cheapness came a certain scepticism about its authenticity.

23:35Despite the instrument being so criticised, people still wanted to claim credit for its existence. The disputes over its history and origin played out side by side with the tournament. One story the press picked up connected the vivazella to the horn of the kudu, a species of antelope.

23:58Historically, animal horns have been used in South African culture, but the theory linking the kudu horn to the vivazella was likely inspired by one supporter of the team Mammalody Sundowns, who is known to bring the horn to football games. Here's researcher Dwayne Jethro again. While it is absolutely true that we have indigenous traditions of horn blowing in South Africa, whether and how we can trace a genealogy of the Vuvuzela all the way back to those indigenous traditions, that's open to argument and debate. Another claim came from the Nazareth Baptist Church, also known as the Shembe, who have a horn of their own.