HERE AND THERE: Proudly African
It’s a safe bet that in 1946 in Orlando, Florida, USA, when Earl Silas Tupper developed the product that has now become a synonym for kitchen containers he had no idea it would ever be sporting the slogan, ‘Proudly African’. In Nigeria we generally just stick to the generic short form, as in ‘just pack the fried rice in the plastic’, or in the related, ‘wrap the eba in the lylon’… but I digress.
Despite its Floridian origins, Tupperware, the product with the singular distinction of serving as an empowering tool for post world war housewives smarting at being relegated back to the kitchen after tasting the liberating fervour of the workplace, is in the full swing of the new awakening now sweeping South Africa.
Although it was Avon, founded in 1886 by David H, McConnell (California) that pioneered a direct marketing system developed by Mrs. P.F.E. Albee through the idea of the Avon lady, Tupperware is known for the Tupperware party, a strategy that made the company famous, spurred sales, and provided home bound women with a convenient way to make some money for themselves.
Right now there is a huge party on the roll in SA and its theme is finally, African. The flyer for this month’s Proudly African Tupperware campaign, displays a colour suffused, on the go food storage container in saturated red, purple, yellow, violet and green.
Woolworths, SA’s generally toffee nosed quality food and clothes brand store is bursting with touches of local colour. I did a double take two weeks ago when I bumped into rails of brightly coloured t -shirts and tops, boasting not just the logos of European and American soccer teams but the names of South Africa’s provincial capitals. There were rows of big flamboyant afrocentric jewelry, giant hoop earrings, big in- your-face necklaces, and unmistakably “tribal” bangles: In Woolies? The home of the winter greys and autumn browns? Hey, we are finally African! Who knew?
For the government owned broadcaster, SAFM, the World Cup inspired the brilliant idea of playing 100 percent African music in the month leading up to and for the duration of the soccer festival. This was so visitors could get a taste of South African music whenever they tuned into the station, otherwise they might just have been confused as to whether the planes that brought them actually had landed on a different continent.
The flag story comes in two parts. Right now every other car is festooned with the South African flag and the drivers span the rainbow. Some cars have two South African flags and a third from a different country, as well as nifty gloves on both car mirrors patterned like the country flag. Traders armed with flags hit the Joburg streets two months ago. Yours truly was on the look out for African flags because there are SIX African countries taking part in this historic African FIFA World Cup that we have been told, ad nauseum, is unlikely ever to happen on this continent again! Trust me, at least in the part of town where I looked there were no African flags to be seen, and each trader I asked would give a puzzled look and point to the SA flags he had.
Ditto for the shops and offices that were proudly displaying their commitment: all the flags in sight were of the elites of the soccer world, Brazil. Germany, Spain, Italy. Just as patience exhausted, I was about to put irate pen to angry paper, I drove out one morning and glimpsed my first Nigerian flag fluttering from the hands of a street trader, along with Ghana, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Algeria. Phew! These are not small victories. South Africa is very often many countries in one, but there is a papable sense of national pride and achievement in making this World Cup possible, evinced outwardly in the displays of patriotism and in private conversations among South Africans of all races.
Last week witnessed another destination reached in this ‘long walk’ in the hosting of the Super 14 Rugby final in Soweto, one of the world’s symbolic black capitals. Apartheid divided everything along racial lines. This coming together, an equivalent of Mohammed and the mountain meeting, was a huge deal in ushering the hopes for transfiguration that is part of the message of this achievement.
Yes, it may be transient, and the message may at times get tossed aside in the hurly burly of all the other battles still to be won here, as seen in the muttered threats to African foreigners, just wait till after the games.
But a memory of what can be, will have been made; a political question will have been answered with the words, yes we can; Africans will have the luxury of 6 teams root and cheer for and FIFA’s cultural lens will have had its angle adjusted somewhat. We will all then go home and deal with the hangover.
What more can you ask of a party?
