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State of emergency in South Africa: It’s the World Cup. Even the Goethe-Institut is joining in the ball game. The project Football Meets Culture spans a bridge between football and culture while showing Johannesburg and the surrounding area in a new light. By Angelika Luderschmidt

The media churned with excitement. Journalists from all over Germany travelled to Johannesburg and examined the accommodations of the German national team. The shock came: Heinz Mulder never heard of Michael Ballack! And he has no idea what Lukas Podolski looks like or whether Philipp Lahm makes his living with singing or football. Although Mulder, the manager of the Velmore Grande, will soon be housing the German national team.

The South African luxury hotel near Johannesburg received the team’s consent and is booked up for at least three weeks. So, that worked out well. Yet, it’s not only Mulder who is astonishingly uninformed, many other things are quite different than they were at the World Cup four years ago in Germany: there’s no Playstation in the rooms, the door frame blocks the view of the TV from the bathtub and to make matters worse, there’s a dead frog floating in the pool.

Football for image promotion

In Johannesburg no one understands what the fuss is all about. They are really looking forward to visitors from around the world. Fans will cheer together, get talking to one another, get to know the country and the people. The locals see the World Cup as an opportunity to get in touch with other people, show them the beauty of their homeland and to, if not rid cities such as Johannesburg of their negative image, at least to put them into perspective. This kind of national consciousness is new in a country that is characterized by social opposites and in which the gap between rich and poor is visibly growing.

Even at the Goethe-Institut, it’s all about football, at least with regard to the name of the cultural programme. It is called Football Meets Culture and its makers want to show how well the two suit one another. “We see football as choreography,” explains Peter Anders, responsible for the Goethe-Institut’s cultural programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. This is also the recurrent theme for in each of the projects, artists from South Africa and from Germany also create encounters between the locals and visitors, develop a playing field for integration at the local level and advance a spirit of community.

Photo gallery: On the cultural playing field

The programme demonstrates that love of the game is not only big in football; you can also play with words. And the word “culture” and the concept behind it can be interpreted many different ways.

For example, the X Homes project involves a play without a stage, with performances held in the private homes of Johannesburg’s less affluent districts. Other artists came up with idea of the Trailer Park, in which a number of caravans will be set up on the grounds of the Goethe-Institut during the World Cup. Camping is communal.

Yet, camping follows strict rules. Territories are precisely defined and holiday-goers demarcate their realms with hedges, canopies or tarpaulins. On the Goethe-Institut grounds all of the matches will be broadcast in the caravans on television, so that football fans without TVs can root for their teams during the World Cup. In this way, the project can reach people who otherwise would have no contact with the Goethe-Institut.

On a truck through Soweto

The history of South Africa – a country in which oppression of the black population was not put to an end until the first free elections in 1994 – has always been one of boundaries. Yet, even today the lines drawn between the socially disadvantaged are not a matter of urban architecture, but part of a complex sociological system based on displacement, in which the upper class decides the geographical conditions.

Football Meets Culture will latch onto these social and societal backgrounds, artists from South Africa and Germany together examine reality in the various districts of Johannesburg and thus reveal a country on its way to new places. “However, the programme is not a documentation of the conditions in the post-apartheid state, but focuses primarily on the work of the artists,” says Anders. No one involved in Football Meets Culture intends to raise an accusatory finger to point to the difficult lives of many South Africans.

In the project, integration serves as a link between football and culture. “We don’t wish to represent exclusiveness or create islands,” explains Anders. Instead the objectives are encounters, dialogue, partnerships and overcoming distances and prejudices. Artists and academics, for example, will show the urban development of Johannesburg. The DJ duo of the Teichmann Brothers will drive through Soweto on a truck seeking out contacts with the inhabitants and compiling music together with them.

Media show a one-sided image

“We have a clear statement: we want to bring people together and then keep them connected,” is how Katharina von Ruckteschell-Katte, director of the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, explains the overall programme. Artists from Germany and all of South Africa will design this programme together with the city’s residents.

Four million people live in Soweto in very little space. The neighbourhood in the southwest of Johannesburg is considered one of the world’s most dangerous. “Of course, we don’t want people to be held up,” von Ruckteschell-Katte puts our minds at ease although she finds it irritating. “Hardly any other country focuses so much on the aspect of crime as Germany does and it’s simply exaggerated. There are other countries that are just as dangerous.” Still – and her colleague Anders also stresses this – the projects are not being used to change the one-sided image of South Africa in Germany. “Basically, that’s unimportant when you’re creating art.”

Instead, Zakumi will be taking care of South Africa’s image work. The little mascot of the 2010 FIFA football world championships is battling afro-pessimism. The fluffy leopard stands for self-confidence, kindness and hospitality. His shaggy mane shimmers fittingly in hopeful green. Zakumi can be bought on nearly every corner of Johannesburg in addition to jerseys, flags and vuvuzelas (stadium horns): another aspect of football culture.