South Africa 2010 - USA/England


We stayed at a camp about 20 miles from the stadium. Lots of great scenery nearby, but I was having a hard enough time remembering what side of the road to drive on to enjoy it, let alone take pictures!

Royal Bafokeng Stadium

The Bafokeng are an indigenous people of the Rustenburg area. When the white Afrikaners set up the Transvall nation by selling land they had "discovered", the Bafokeng enlisted white agents to buy their land back for themselves. They had the good fortune to later find one of the world's largest platinum deposits there, and used some of the proceeds to build this stadium. (Time Magazine article) The stadium was built for the world cup and is unlikely to hold similar crowds to this one often. Of the venues we went to, this was my least favorite — field separated by the fans by a running track, and lacking both modern amenities and traditional character (but, fair to say, I would have liked it better if the USA/Ghana game here had a different outcome!)


Thank you Robert Greene! The game ends in a 1-1 draw, but there were no doubts among both the fans and the players by their actions that this was a moral victory for the USA.


Leaving the Rustenburg camp involves driving over a partially-submerged bridge.