Ban Vuvuzela and Airlift This World Cup to Europe Before It's Over!!

Africa has inherited and learned many cultures from the West, some which have proved detrimental, others, beneficial. However, the reverse cannot be said of the West. They are simply okay with everything that they do, which is always right. Quite unfortunate.

Even more unfortunate is that they always try to convert Africans to seeing things using their own sunglasses, by portraying their (African) practices either as uncouth, or completely primitive in this 21st century. Quite unfortunate.

Not willing to be ostracized from the practices associated with the global village (which is defined by how the west wants everyone to live), the African man and woman have accommodatingly accepted whatever has been thrown their way.

At times, they have forced us to adopt their way of living. Colonization was one of them, homosexuality is becoming one of them. Never mind that so far, there’s no single native African language that has a word for gay or lesbian relationship, and there’s no single African native language that has a word for corruption, something that they also introduced in this society, taught our men and women who were eager to learn and adopt everything west. Now they are practicing what they were taught as a good student should, but you can see all the criticism.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t condone corruption. Never will. But the fact that the West tend to tell us what is wrong and right even when we know that we can decide for ourselves is, again, quite unfortunate.

This article has gone too far already. My desire actually is to opine on the recent suggestions doing rounds on the media that the vuvuzelas should be banned from world cup stadiums. Why? Because some light-skinned, fat-cheeked dude sitting comfortably in a spacious palace, able to afford a Dizzie Gillespie's Martin Committee Trumpet as a birthday present for his unborn child thinks that the vuvuzela ‘noise’ coming out of his 103-inch plasma display panel TV is discomforting.

Africa is about dance and music. I repeat; Africa is about dance and music. These are our fantasy du-jour. These are what make our world go round. These are what makes us Africans. These are our hamburgers and hotdogs that satiate our appetite in the stadiums. When our opposing team’s fans enjoy their cans of Coke, we draw in a lot of air and release it on our vuvuzelas. When the ‘noise’ that comes out from that Ghanaian in the last row of the auditorium rhymes with that coming out of the Kenyan watching the game outside the stadium, it connects us and reminds us that we share Africa, with its traditions and  ‘noise.’

The ‘noise’ has been likened to a herd of stampeding elephants. Elephants make us Africans. Critics also claim that it is a danger to hearing and completely camouflages the singing loved by many international supporters. International supporters is the key word here. Who cares about local supporters? I say this is Africa’s World Cup. We need to celebrate it our own way because no one knows if, not when, Africa will get another chance to host this event.

For those who want to sing, sing louder. If you cant, well, Arturo Freeman once said, ‘If you can't beat them over the years, ... you might as well join them.’

Bottomline is, we would rather embrace our ‘excessive noise’ than adopt the wayward spirit of hooliganism in our stadias.  The Mexicans have the Mexican wave, the English have their Three Lions song and Africa has its vuvuzela!!

Every nation has its own traditions and modus operandi. On his official Twitter page, FIFA President Sepp Blatter summed up everything saying, “I don’t see banning the music traditions of fans in their own country. Would you want to see a ban on the fan traditions in your country?”

Ours is the vuvuzela. So for all the critics fronting for the ban of our stampeding elephant, buy some earplugs, switch off the tube or buy a vuvuzela and be part of the noise.

And that’s thesteifmastertake!!