The phrase “once in a lifetime” has been bandied about a lot in recent weeks and it is beginning to sound like one of those hackneyed marketing lines that don’t really say anything but are supposed to make us feel warm and fuzzy.
The phrase “once in a lifetime” has been bandied about a lot in recent weeks and it is beginning to sound like one of those hackneyed marketing lines that don’t really say anything but are supposed to make us feel warm and fuzzy.
But this really is once in a lifetime because none of us can ever expect to live a month like this again. Since 10 June we have been living the ups and downs of hosting the planet’s biggest, most exciting sporting event.
The whole world has been scrutinising us as we built the stadiums and then we hoped against all hope that our team, Bafana Bafana would do us proud.
We watched the boys do okay against Mexico then let us down badly against Uruguay, but we are still surpassing all expectations in our ability to host this World Cup.
As this edition of the newspaper is put to bed we are already planning the next one that will be swamped with National Arts Festival related articles and photographs.
We are on the brink of a Festival that promises to be the biggest and the best in a long and illustrious history. there will certainly be many events and stalls that will try to capitalise on the Soccer World Cup.
We are incredibly lucky here in Grahamstown to be experiencing, albeit indirectly, the world’s biggest sporting event and at the same time but considerably more directly the African continent’s biggest arts and culture event.
And before this World Cup is over, this town will host the Highway Africa conference which is the biggest single gathering of African journalists anywhere, as well as the World Journalism Education Conference.
We could truly be forgiven for thinking that if the centre of the world is not in Grahamstown, it isn’t very far from here!
We are, undeniably, living a once in a lifetime month and will never be able to explain to our grandchildren the absolute enormity of the occasion, so we had better enjoy it while it lasts.
