South Africa's soccer ambassador Charles Manuel's goal: Use the World Cup to show Chicagoans how much Africa has to offer

By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, Tribune newspapers
June 13, 2010

n South Africa, as in much of the world, soccer is religion, and Charles Manuel grew up a devoted disciple, though he never could afford cleats.

Instead, Manuel, an orphan living in a Cape Town squatter camp, would play in his tall rubber "gumboots," kicking the ball across a gravel field to the merciless jeers of his friends.

"I was a joke for an entire season," recalled Manuel.
The gumboots are gone now, replaced by the shiny black leather of a diplomat's dress shoes, fit for his role as consul economic at the South African Consulate in Chicago. But Manuel's passion for soccer is as strong as ever, especially now that soccer's holiest occasion, the World Cup, has landed on his native soil.

Manuel is a driving force behind efforts to promote South Africa's World Cup in Chicago, a mission that's about far more than the monthlong tournament or soccer or even the host country. As the slogan of this year's World Cup declares, "Africa's time has come," and Manuel hopes to squeeze every opportunity to show the world what Africa is capable of.

"It's the biggest billboard anyone could hope for," Manuel said as he sat wearing his yellow-and-green South African soccer jersey in a consulate conference room. "The mere fact that Africa is able to deliver the world's second biggest sporting spectacle to world-class standards, I think is a testament to the fact that Africa is the new frontier, we are actually part of the developing world, in a sense. We are not the dark continent that everyone's making us out to be."

South Africa has been fighting a public relations battle since it was selected to host the 2010 World Cup, the first held in Africa in the tournament's 80-year history. Critics worried that the country wouldn't be able to deliver stadiums or infrastructure in time, that power supply would be spotty, that the high crime rate would menace visitors.

From his post in Chicago, Manuel felt confident his country would prove the skeptics wrong, and the task turned to capitalizing on the attention. On top of his regular job generating investment in South Africa on behalf of South Africa's Department of Trade and Industry, Manuel took the wheel of the consulate's efforts to promote the World Cup in Chicago, pounding the pavement with his consulate colleagues to spread soccer zeal and African pride. He and his consulate team have accomplished that through meetings with dignitaries from other consulates, outreach to immigrant communities, charity fundraising and good, old-fashioned marching — South African style.

Fridays have been renamed "soccer Fridays" at the consulate, where a 6-foot stuffed Zakumi — the mascot for South Africa's World Cup, a leopard-like creature with a shock of green hair — greets visitors as they get off the elevator, and a huge, inflatable soccer ball decorates the hallway.

Clad in South African soccer jerseys on a recent Friday, consulate staff took to the streets of the Loop waving their nation's flag and handing out fliers about local soccer events.

The goal was to drum up support for the events they helped to organize: the opening day screenings at Daley Plaza, second-day screenings and a local soccer tournament on the fields at Montrose Beach, and a screening of the finals July 11 at Soldier Field.

Passersby stopped to stare when they heard the blare of the vuvuzelas, South African stadium horns that boom like an elephant's trumpet when tooted alone and create a buzz like a swarm of bees when tooted en masse at soccer matches.

"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and we are doing everything to capitalize on it," said South African Consul General Nomvume Pearl Magaqa, who walked Michigan Avenue wearing a makarapa, a colorful hard hat that fans often wear to South African soccer games.

The outreach seemed to strike a chord.

As she perused a flier, Hannah O'Connor of Oak Park said she hadn't heard of the local events celebrating the World Cup, but she was excited to take her 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. "We are big into teaching them all about the world," O'Connor said.

When Robert Spicer saw the jersey colors, he sprinted across Michigan Avenue and excitedly announced to the consulate staff that he'd recently returned from South Africa. Spicer, who works as the culture and climate coordinator at Fenger Academy High School on the South Side, had gone to South Africa with the Community Justice for Youth Institute in January to learn about the country's restorative justice initiatives to better teach students conflict resolution techniques and diversity management.

"I'm going to keep telling people about this," said Spicer, waving the flier listing the local World Cup events. "Celebrate a new Africa!"

To further connect Chicagoans to South Africa's World Cup, the consulate teamed up with EthniCity Soccer, which puts on an annual Chicago World Cup with mostly local amateur teams representing different countries. The theme this year is "Celebrate Africa," with efforts to recruit more African teams than usual.

Sebastien Labat, a French expatriate who founded the Chicago World Cup in 2006 because he was disheartened that there were so few World Cup festivities in the city, said he's thrilled the South African consulate reached out to him for a partnership. The Chicago World Cup, which has grown from 16 teams its first year to 48 teams this summer, for the first time will hold its finals at Soldier Field, on the same day as the World Cup finals in South Africa.

To recruit more African teams for the Chicago World Cup, Manuel reached out to the World Soccer League, bringing Zakumi and a replica of a World Cup trophy to league games in Jackson Park. He emerged with a commitment from a team that will represent Liberia, a country that has never qualified for the World Cup.

"It brings a little bit of pride for the community," said Gregory Nimpson, a Liberian and president of the World Soccer League, a nine-team league with players hailing from Ghana to Haiti.

The Chicago World Cup this year has eight African teams, up from one or two African teams in previous years, Labat said.

Though it is South Africa's party, the World Cup has many of Chicago's other African immigrant communities celebrating as if it were their own. Eric Tande, a Cameroonian and president of emerging-markets consulting firm Makuna International Corp., said Cameroonians are planning viewing parties at homes and in African restaurants, and will likely crowd the TV sets even if their national team is eliminated in the first round.

"Employers will notice an uptick of sickness among Cameroonians during the World Cup," Tande said.

Others haven't felt the excitement in Chicago.

"I just came from Ghana (a month ago), and it is a big deal in Africa, a big, big deal," said John Henry Assabill, president of the Ghana National Council on Metropolitan Chicago. "But not here. The reality is that business here is slow, and people are living from pocket to mouth. I have been interacting with my people every day, and nobody is catching fire with this thing."

Manuel said interest and enthusiasm has been high, from African communities and outsiders alike. "We're getting a flood of questions on the country; I'm getting investment inquiries," Manuel said.

Peter Magai Bul, assistant secretary for the Sudanese Community Association of Illinois, said he hopes Africans' shared pride in South Africa's hosting of the World Cup helps unite Chicago's diverse African immigrant communities. The day-to-day business of survival often keeps the disparate nationalities clinging to their own, and the fractured African diaspora is missing opportunities to help themselves, he said.

"We have a culture that came with us and a tradition that we want people to know, and those things can only happen when we are united," said Bul, who came to the U.S. in 2001, as one of Sudan's Lost Boys orphaned by the Sudanese Civil War. "Many voices make a difference."

For Manuel, inter-African unity is one of the many legacies he hopes South Africa's World Cup leaves behind. He also wishes for an improved image for South Africa, increased investment and reduced ignorance about Africa among Americans.

"I still go to places and people ask me if I know their cousin in Ghana," Manuel said. "They ask some of the most ridiculous questions."

But the legacy that Manuel holds dearest is the one that strikes closest to home: the Soccer 4 Good Foundation, a scholarship fund the consulate is starting on the momentum of the World Cup to help send South African students to school.

Manuel is planning a gala cocktail reception in August with raffle prizes, including a 10-day trip to South Africa, with hopes to raise $50,000. Just $100 can put a kid through school for a year, he said.

"I know what it's like to be this kid living in the street," he said. "Ultimately, it is not about us over here, it is about how the work we do affects the millions of people back home."

Manuel's journey from the slums of Cape Town in the stranglehold of apartheid to an overseas diplomatic post has driven his confidence that Africa can shape its own destiny.

Orphaned when he was 6, Manuel was raised by an aunt in a shanty town called CAFDA, named after the Cape Flats Distress Association, a missionary settlement to help people in squalor. He lived near a beautiful beach, but couldn't step foot on it because it was for whites only.

His aunt's mantra, Manuel said, was that the only way out of poverty was through education, so Manuel would illegally hop trains and hitchhike to get to the university. When he couldn't get a lift, he'd walk the 8 miles to make an exam. He went on to get university degrees in business, education and communication.

"For us, the bottom line was always that where you come from shouldn't determine where you're going," Manuel said.

Manuel felt the sharp slap of rubber bullets pelting his back during student protests, and he felt the relief of the first multiracial elections in 1994, signaling the end of apartheid. He saw South Africa rise from its dark and violent history to see whites and blacks living together in relative harmony in what has become the continent's financial and industrial powerhouse.

A 16-year-old democracy, South Africa's problems remain severe — poverty, unemployment, crime, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis — but to have surmounted the deep racial tensions wrought by a legacy of institutionalized segregation speaks to its potential, Manuel said.

"That's exactly the South African spirit, it's a can-do spirit, and we don't give up," Manuel said.

After five years in Chicago, Manuel will return to South Africa in October to take a new position in Pretoria.

What he'll miss most, Manuel said, is going to Chicago's sporting events, where seeing people stand and sing the anthem, brimming with patriotism, united behind their team, always moved him.

"I will miss the sport," Manuel said.

aelejalderuiz@tribune.com

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