Orange, black and the complicated legacy of Dutch soccer

They were an intimidating bunch of men. About 40 of them, loudly singing unintelligible chants, convinced that nobody and nothing could stand in their way.

That night, as the Netherlands played Cameroon in the World Cup, Cape Town’s Table Mountain was beautifully illuminated. The combination of liquor and arrogance will have fed their sense that they were to become part of a triumph of historical proportions for the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  

As their 11 warriors got into position, banners were raised, waving in the chilly Cape winter winds. Their singing became louder, promising loyalty to the fatherland until they died. On the final note they raised their biggest banner. It read: “De Kaap is weer Oranje” — “The Cape is Orange again.”

Being of Dutch Caribbean heritage and a descendent of slaves forcefully brought to the New World, I felt uneasy about this celebration of Dutch colonial mastery of the Cape. The Dutch fans’ banner dampened my patriotic feelings.  

The founders of Cape Town were part of the same Dutch corporation as those who had enslaved my forefathers and founded what was to become my motherland in the Dutch West Indies. The man who founded the plantation to which I traced back part of my family history, Jurriaan François de Friderici, was actually born in Cape Town.

At this stadium on the shore, not far from where Dutch colonial administrator Jan van Riebeeck had landed on April 6, 1652, the Dutch played their final match in the group stage of the FIFA 2010 World Cup. Although the team was already through to the next stage, the Orange Lions easily defeated the Indomitable Lions 2–1.

After their victory in the Mother City, I saw the support for the orange legion growing match by match, culminating in their victory over Brazil in Port Elizabeth. Unconsciously, I too became like those men in the stadium, secretly believing in a new gospel: Holland would become world football champions.

As the tournament was progressing and the Dutch kept on flexing their muscles, I was strolling through Cape Town’s center one day when I noticed a banner hanging on the side of a building. It was orange and read: “Baholland, Baholland,” a play on “Bafana Bafana,” the nickname for the South African squad, which never made it through the group stage. I began to notice more and more orange banners, flags and posters in Cape Town. Were the Dutch recolonizing the city?

The ambiguity I’d felt earlier in the tournament made way for pride and some sense of belonging. Whenever I spoke Dutch somewhere in Cape Town or mentioned I was from the Netherlands, big smiles and support followed. I felt even more Dutch than I did in the Netherlands, where I’d long ago been awakened from the dream of racial tolerance to face reality as a black man in a white man’s world. But for a moment, in 2010, all of those feelings simply faded to orange thanks to football. 

As told to Africasacountry. Serginho Roosblad (Twitter: @SRoosblad) is a producer for Radio Netherlands Africa.