(REUTERS) – Offices and streets in South Africa were dressed in green and gold yesterday as thousands of people, from President Jacob Zuma downwards, wore the national colours to support their World Cup team. “Football Fridays” were launched last year in an attempt to boost patriotism and excitement ahead of the World Cup finals, which FIFA officials had complained was muted.
The idea has snowballed as the soccer extravaganza gets closer with more and more people wearing the first and reserve kit of the national team Bafana Bafana (The Boys).
The hosts kick off the month-long tournament on June 11 against Mexico at Johannesburg’s Soccer City stadium.
Many companies have bought shirts for their staff and everyone from top executives to cleaners wear them.
South Africa’s largest retail bank, Absa, has bought 35 000 shirts while Zuma’s office says he routinely wears the shirt on Fridays.
The Bafana team kit has had the greatest success of various marketing ploys to increase patriotic involvement in Africa’s first World Cup.
A special dance called the diski — local slang for football — has also been invented but has failed to win universal appeal, partly because it is complicated to learn.
The World Cup local organising committee has also encouraged South Africans to fly the flag and learn the national anthem, a mixture of the nation’s languages, which many English and Afrikaans speakers still do not know 16 years after the end of apartheid.
But national flags and wing mirror socks are popular among car drivers, including foreigners who take the precaution of flying the South African and their team’s flags.