Complaints are growing in media and supporter’s circles regarding the loud horns being played by fans at the South African World Cup football matches. Known as ‘vuvuzelas’, the blowing horns have been regular features during football matches in South Africa, where the rather obnoxious noise produced is designed to intimidate or “kill off” the opponents. There is even talk of the metre long horns being banned soon for the rest of the tournament.
Thousands of football fans worldwide have complained about the drone of the vuvuzelas, which have been described as like a swarm of bees or a pregnant water buffalo in labour. Some angry football fans have claimed the endless noise is worse than their wives’ nagging and want to hear the offensive sound silenced as well as the vuvuzelas.
One complaint read “What an absolutely disgraceful, ear-wrenching noise,” whilst another said “Gordon Brown’s Scottish drawl wasn’t half as bad as this racket”.
A website called Ban Vuvusela has even been set up where football fans and desperate housewives can vote on whether they want to see the horns banned from future matches. At the time of writing, the ‘Votes to Ban’ enormously outnumber those of the ‘Votes to Keep’. It’s not hard to assume that latter votes come from proud South Africans and the deaf.
However, FIFA president Sepp Blatter has called on the vuvuzelas to continue and accused those with bleeding ears of discrimination against Africans. World Cup organisers have also joined the chorus of those in favour of keeping the horns, claiming the plastic instruments as being a “potent symbol of the tournament” and a good way to drown out the sound of rape alarms beeping across the cities.
It remains to be seen whether the vuvuzelas will be banned from football stadiums, like they are from South African rugby stadiums. With more and more people switching off due to the racket, it’s certain that unless action is taken, there will be a large increase of anusimpedimentia cases referred to local hospitals.
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Now it has started and it’s a bug, there are a couple of petitions online to ban the vuvuzela from the World Cup. Here’s one:
http://www.petitiononline.com/2010WC/petition.html