Here at Howzit-HongKong.com, we’ve been moerse (very) impressed at the effort put in by the South African Consulate in Hong Kong in promoting our country’s honour of hosting the world for the FIFA Football World Cup in June 2010.
Local Hong Kong businesses have joined the party and added their own events to the groundswell in anticipation of the world’s biggest sports event back home.
It is more than clear that world-wide, South Africa, and in a wider scale… Africa, is currently the flavour of the month.
I regularly visit the new K11 Mall near my apartment and have been impressed at the levels the promotions department of Hong Kong (and the world’s) only Art Mall have gone to in promoting Africa and South Africa. In late March, K11 hosted a South African dance troupe to kick-off their Africa focus. All over the Mall, exhibits and fotographs featuring Africa can be seen while their frontline promotions staff are all kitted out in African-print uniforms.
Last week, I popped in to the Jason’s Grocery Store at K11 for my weekly provisions and took the following pictures:
The K11 frontline staff are dressed in African-style uniforms:
Well done K11 Mall! You are playing your part in focussing local attention on South Africa in 2010!
This kind off African/South African-promotional initiative is but one of the un-recorded spin-offs of the FIFA 2010 World Cup that often go un-noticed. Howzit-HongKong.com can only hope that local events like this will in the future help to welcome more Hong Kongers, Mainland Chinese and other Asians to South Africa.
That, for us, will be the REAL benefit and legacy of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Ke Nako. It’s our time.
Mike Jansen
K11 is a high-rise building located in Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon developed by New World Developments. Underground it can be accessed via the pedestrian walkway from the Tsim Sha Tsui MTR towards Tsim Sha Tsui East MTR. The building features a 340 000 square-foot, 6-storey shopping centre beneath the Hyatt Regency Hong Kong.
The 2010 FIFA World Cup is but mere days away but alas, Howzit-HongKong.com can confirm that we will miss out on Afrika’s grandest gathering.
That said, we will continue to do what we do best, get YOU to go and experience the warmth and love that only our homeland can give.
HongKongers LOVE football, however you have to experience the heart and soul of the sport; that there is more to the game than just to win or lose a fistfull of dollars at your nearest HK Jockey Club outlet.
Go to Afrika in June 2010. You will find it there.
Every great event needs a good soundtrack. Come June 2010, when we sit in front of our tv screen here in Hong Kong, sipping our Nederburg Twenty10 Cabernet Sauvignon to balance out the sweetness of our favourite char siu bao, all the time watching the world visiting South Africa, this will be our soundtrack to the 2010 FIFA World Cup!
Welcome to my home and…
Feel Afrika.
Mike Jansen
“We came, We saw, We tried!” Cheers Akon for the Video: Oh Africa
Nederburg’s Twenty10 range is available at your nearest Park ‘n Shop.
South African readers, please click on the banner below to support Howzit! (only a click needed)
If there’s one thing that Hong Kong people love it’s their seafood. This time around it was fish…
Mark Anthony Fish.
FIFA 2010 Ambassador Mark Fish this afternoon unveiled a special 2010 Countdown Clock at Causeway Bay’s Times Square.
The South African Consulate in Hong Kong, under the energetic leadership of Consul-General Ms. Tembi Tambo has been very busy promoting what will certainly be South Africa and indeed Africa’s biggest sporting event:
The 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup.
The Consulate partnered with local broadcast rights-holder Hong Kong Cable TV, the Hong Kong Football Club and the Leisure & Cultural Services Department to organise what was a very enjoyable media event. The afternoon kicked off with a Diski Dance performance by a South African dance group who travelled to Times Square directly from the airport. There was no jet-lag to be seen as the energetic troupe entertained the assembled media and local shoppers on stage.
Diski Dance… This is how we do it in Africa, La! Ke Nako / It’s out time!
Mark Fish was then invited to the stage to tell the audience about, amongst other questions, just what the 2010 World Cup means to him as well as to South Africans at large. Feeeeeesh (as the fans would shout when Fish touched the ball back in the days) did himself and the South African Local Organising Committee (LOC) proud by giving the assembled media a glimpse of what they can expect at the World Cup in just under 100 days. In typical Hong Kong style, questions from the MC opened about the recent addition to the Fish family! (The Consulate had alerted the local media that Mark’s girlfriend had given birth to a baby girl recently.)
SA Consul-General Ms Tembi Tambo joined Mark Fish at Times Square (Pic: Mike Jansen)
The event ended with Fish joining invited guests to unveil a special 2010 countdown clock.
As will be the case come the FIFA 2010 World Cup, the sound of the Vuvuzela was heard throughout the ceremony, courtesy of the Diski Dancers!
Ke Nako! It’s our time.
Bring on 2010!
(If you’re in SA, please click on theInsurance4Women.co.za ad to support Howzit-HongKong.com)
Former South African (Bafana Bafana) footballer Mark Fish will visit Hong Kong this week as a guest of the South African Consulate.
South African Consul-General in Hong Kong Ms Tembi Tambo has been actively promoting events around South Africa’s 2010 Soccer World Cup and invited Mark Fish, who is also a 2010 World Cup Ambassador, to Hong Kong.
2010 Ambassadors Mark Fish (left) and Lukas Radebe with President Zuma (Pic: WEF)
Today (March 2, 2010) marks the official 100-day countdown to the start of the World Cup in South Africa. During a media event to be hosted by local broadcast rights-holder iCable tomorrow (Wednesday March 3), Fish will unveil a special World Cup countdown clock at the piazza at Times Square, Causeway Bay.
During his stay in Hong Kong, Mark Fish will also conduct two football clinics for aspiring players at the Hong Kong Football Club as well as in Kowloon City.
Love them or hate them, the Vuvuzela will be a major must-have during the 2010 Soccer World Cup, now just over 100 days away.
During the recent Confederations Cup ‘test event’ some spectators and in particular the TV broadcasters complained over what they called the ‘mindless, monotonous cacophony’ emitted by these plastic horns.
However, this has just spurned a whole new industry around the horn and we were very amused to see the following t-shirt print in the SA dailies this past week proudly exclaiming: Africa is a noisy place!
(Continued below)
An innovative Cape Town-based outfit called K.E.L.P. came up with a very environmentally friendly way of satisfying what will ultimately be a best-selling soccer-tourist keepsake from the first World Cup in Africa. KELP is an acronym for Kelp Environmental Learning Projectwhich aims at promoting environmental awareness and to educate the public about marine conservation and environmental matters. The business uses dried kelp horns to create vuvuzelas which are painted and branded.
Have a look a how they do it:
WikiPedia has the following to say about the origin of the Vuvuzela:
A vuvuzela, or a stadium horn, is a blowing horn, approximately one metre in length, commonly blown by fans at football matches in South Africa. It is also used in other countries such as Mexico, Brazil, or Israel. The origin of the name is disputed. It may originate from the Zulu for “making noise,” from the “vuvu” sound it makes, or from township slang related to the word for “shower.”
Originally made out of tin, the vuvuzela became popular in South Africa in the 1990s.
I am hearing the words ’2010 is Africa’s year’ all over the media these days.
Of course the words refer to the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup that kicks off in South Africa in June later this year. People are hoping that a successful World Cup on Africa’s soil (a first in soccer history) will help dispel the notion that Africa is the so-called ‘dark continent’where poverty, corruption and indeed AIDS are all-pervasive and that nothing good comes out of Africa. “TIA… this is Africa” said Leonardo DeCaprio’s character in the movie Blood Diamond.
The African Cup of Nations (ACN) that kicks off in Angola today, was supposed to be a curtain-raiser of sorts to the World Cup. Another major sports event to help prove to the world that the faith put in Africa to host the biggest sports event in the world was the right decision. That a group of ’terrorists‘ decided to use the ACN to further their own ideals, put a serious bump in the road toward SA 2010 (despite the South African President’s statements to the contrary).
I read an interesting article in today’s South China Morning Post titled: “Cup of good hope.“ While David Smith, writing for the Guardian News & Media, could have been referring to the African Cup of Nation or even the Soccer World Cup, he was actually writing about the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
While the William Webb Ellis Cup indeed brought South Africans together in 1995, Africans also need the African Cup of Nations and FIFA World Cup to do likewise. This time for the entire continent.
Ke Nako. Celebrate Africa’s Humanity
(Click on the scans to view larger in new tab)
(Ke Nako. Celebrate Africa’s Humanity is the official slogan of the 2010 World Cup)
The South African Consulate in Hong Kong recently held a FIFA 2010 Soccer World Cup exhibition at Times Square in Causeway Bay. The various official FIFA sponsors exhibited their wares while South Africa’s plans for the 2010 soccer showpiece were also put on display.
FIFA sponsor Adidas displayed their official 2010 ball ‘Jabulani’
The biggest event of the 4-day exhibit was undoubtedly the Diski Dance exhibition. While the Consulate struggled to gather enough participants, especially those from the South African expatriate community, to agree to come to the practice sessions in Kennedy Town a few days before the Times Square exhibition, enough people gathered at the popular Causeway Bay mall to show Hongkongers just what Diski Dance is all about:
It is heartening to see that the Consulate is taking the lead in promoting what is undoubtedly South Africa’s biggest venture by far: the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. It is also good to see that sports stores across the SAR seem to be following suit and setting up displays highlighting this biggest sports event on the world sport calendar (The Adidas Store in Tsim Sha Tsui (TST) has a huge ‘Jabulani’ poster on display).
谢谢你/Mgoi/Xie Xie/Dankie/Thank You to Consul-General Tembi Tambo and her dedicated staff.
SA Consul-General Tembi Tambo hands over a prize sponsored by official FIFA sponsor McDonalds.
(Pictures supplied by Eva Yan via the event FaceBook Group)
