South Africa World Cup: What's worse, the vuvuzelas or the whining about them?

How do I compare thee, oh vuvuzela? A swarm of bees, perhaps, or a runaway freight train tearing through the inside of one’s cranium.

Local South Africans call the arm’s length plastic trumpet part of their soccer tradition, saying it gives their players an advantage. Outsiders, including the world's best player, Argentina's Lionel Messi, and even a few South Africans, consider the vuvuzela a nuisance that should be banned from the South Africa World Cup. A stadium full of vuvuzelas drowns out the bands and songs of other visiting nations, they argue.

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Gift, a Zimbabwean migrant who sells vuvuzelas and national flags on a street corner in Johannesburg, has the merchant’s natural dislike of strong opinions.

Personally, he dislikes vuvuzelas. But he’s happy to sell them.

“I think they should be banned, because in Zimbabwe at football matches, we sing songs, we dance, and here, with the vuvuzelas playing, eh, you can’t hear anything,” says Gift, who won’t give his full name. That said, he has already sold out today’s stock of vuvuzelas by noontime, and he doesn’t think World Cup organizers could get rid of vuvuzela even if they tried. “Everyone has them now, even the Europeans. So I don’t think they can ban them.”

A weekend into the World Cup, and the calls to ban vuvuzelas are starting to get louder.

Players complain they have trouble communicating with each other. Doctors say the vuvuzela can damage one’s hearing. Fans from other countries who love nothing more than a rousing national anthem to give their boys a little spirit on the field say they are getting, well, blown away.

Steve Bloomfield, author of Africa United, and a blogger here in South Africa for the World Cup, says the trumpets should be banned in the spirit of cultural diversity.

“The World Cup should be a celebration of difference,” writes Mr. Bloomfield in today’s blog, also entitled Africa United. “A time when we get a glimpse of countries and cultures we know little about. And if Bafana fans stop blowing their vuvuzelas perhaps they’ll be able to give us a few renditions of the incredibly moving ‘Shosholoza’ instead.”

Simon Williamson, a local journalist and blogger, begs to differ.

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