R.W. Johnson

South Africa's exit from the World Cup – the first time ever that a host nation has failed to get through the first round – hasn't punctured the buoyant mood here. Partly because of the victory against the former world champions, France; partly because it was, deep down, always expected; partly because the team was so low-ranked that it did well to be competitive at all; but also because France and Italy and all the other African teams except Ghana also went out. If such a fate could befall even the title holders, it was no disgrace.

I seem to have stirred up a hornet's nest by referring less than respectfully to the notion of ‘soccer colonialism’. Perhaps the subject is broader. No doubt the gladiators who hacked one another to pieces for the delectation of the ancient Romans were heavily drawn from colonised races. What is certainly true is that the team photographs of any of the leading European squads look very different today from the way they did in 1966 when – it's hard now to credit it – neither of the two finalists, England and Germany, had any players of colour in their ranks.

Today's match between Portugal and North Korea has stirred memories of the encounter between the two teams in 1966. Today the South African Communist Party formally wished success to North Korea as fellow Communists but what mattered more in 1966 was that North Korea played its matches up in England's north-east and their plucky performances – especially the victory against Italy – won the hearts of Sunderland, Newcastle and Middlesbrough fans and they flocked to cheer them on. That game was more of a contest than today’s 7-0 thrashing: North Korea led 3-0 before Eusébio scored four and Portugal won 5-3.

My neighbour's gardener, a Malawian called Charles Banda, lives in a shack in Khayelitsha, Cape Town's biggest squatter camp. 'It was really dreadful after South Africa lost to Uruguay,' he said to me yesterday. 'Most of my neighbours were watching the game on TV, either at a shebeen or at a friend's. They were drinking as they watched, of course, and by the end they were very angry and disappointed. They've always said they would avenge themselves on foreigners once the World Cup was over but now they didn't feel like waiting for that. So groups of them started going house to house looking for foreigners. They caught two of my friends and shot them. I ran away and slept at a friend's last night.'

The World Cup atmosphere has suffered a noticeable deflation after the 3-0 thumping of South Africa by Uruguay and Nigeria's 2-1 defeat by Greece. Everything suggests that South Africa is about to become the first ever host nation not to get through the group stage of the Cup and that Africa's biggest country is also all but out. The local consensus is that it's time to write off these two and support Ghana and Ivory Coast instead, but the larger probability is that after all the fanfare, Africa will flop again simply because the continent's undoubted talent on the field is matched by a completely disastrous mismanagement of the game in almost every African state.