South Africa's World Cup legacy
Andrew Harding | 14:31 UK time, Friday, 9 July 2010
The vuvuzelas have stopped punctuating every moment. Most cars have shed their flags. And the newspapers are slowly returning to their more regular diet of introspection and gloom.
Yes, the World Cup is nearly over here, and South Africa is wondering what it all meant, and what comes next.
A couple of days ago I spent the afternoon in Sweetwaters - a bleak township south west of Johannesburg - surrounded by tin shacks, shoeless children playing in the dirt, and a dozen teenaged boys furiously kicking at an old football.
The tallest boy, Lindo Sithebe, 18, folded his arms solemnly. "The World Cup is not for people like us," he said without expression. "The World Cup is not for places like this."
After weeks of euphoria, confidence, and vuvuzelas, it was a sobering moment, a reminder that a month of football is not necessarily going to transform South Africa.
But a few yards away, I ran into a group of middle-aged women who begged to differ.
There were five of them, sitting on upturned plastic tubs behind Esther's vegetable stall, catching the fading warmth of the afternoon sun.
Sharon, tall and argumentative, was drinking beer and complaining that she didn't have enough blankets at home.
But all five women were in agreement about the World Cup. Samantha Mphahleni put it best.
"It's much easier to say I'm a South African now. It makes you feel proud. It makes you feel more alive."
Pride and confidence are hard things to measure. But in recent years, South Africa seems to have been running low on both. The magic of the Mandela era has been wearing off.
var emp = new bbc.Emp(); emp.setWidth("400"); emp.setHeight("260"); emp.setDomId("harding090710-2"); emp.setPlaylist("http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/emp/10560000/10569000/10569019.xml"); emp.write();
But over the past month, the change I've seen has been remarkable.
White families - faces painted with the national flag - have ventured onto buses and into black townships for the very first time - giddy with the sense of discovering their own country.
Immigrants from around the continent have rubbed shoulders in crowded bars. Sharp-dressed Congolese, laid-back Zimbabweans, rowdy Ghanaians with their drums and body paint. All united by a rare, but tangible sense of pan-African unity.
Then there are the fans from further afield - shocked to find, as one columnist put it here, that they're more likely to be killed by kindness than by criminals in South Africa.
I was in Bloemfontein for England's final performance against Germany. After the match, the fans poured out into a nearby shopping centre, to drink, mingle, and sing.
I stood watching one group with two black South African office workers. "Your fans are amazing," said one of the women. "We were all scared they would be hooligans. What is that wonderful song they're singing?" It was actually something about German bombers and the RAF. But I didn't spoil the moment for her.
Now, of course, the holiday is nearly over, and a "back to school" feeling is starting to grow here.
A few days ago I managed to grab a moment with President Jacob Zuma. He was at yet another tightly choreographed Fifa event, looking less exhausted that I expected.
Mr Zuma is a bit like his country - his background is turbulent, heroic, and in recent years buffeted by scandal. He's a man of big appetites, and flaws, and enormous personal charm.
After the tournament South Africa, he assured me, would never be the same again. He spoke of the upgraded infrastructure, of the social cohesion, of the invaluable experience gained by police, government and so many other groups.
var emp = new bbc.Emp(); emp.setWidth("400"); emp.setHeight("260"); emp.setDomId("harding090710"); emp.setPlaylist("http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/emp/8800000/8804700/8804723.xml"); emp.write();
But now comes the hard part. The authorities here have finally shown how competent they can be, given a real deadline and enough commitment. But that is, frankly, something of an exception.
South Africa may be a stable, stunning, sophisticated democracy. But it is faced with high unemployment, a crippling housing shortage, a school system in crisis, and one of the world's biggest wealth gaps. The government's record in tackling these problems is nothing to boast of.
"We cannot go back," said Mr Zuma. "We must maintain this momentum, and build on our successes."
Let's hope he can because expectations here have just risen sharply.
Back in Sweetwaters, Samantha and her friends said goodbye and walked back to their tin homes before the sun dipped below the hillside.
The day before, President Zuma had paid an unexpected visit to the township. He'd handed over the keys to three smart new houses built by a charity for some of the poorest residents.
"I saw him," said Samantha, "in the flesh". She's lived for the past 17 years, in a shack the size of a garden shed. She shares it with five others.
"I believe the World Cup will change my life," she said. "I hope it will. Zuma came here and gave us answers. Now I have faith in him. Anything is possible."