SANPARKS, with 2010 Soccer World Cup sponsor First National Bank and the 2010 Local Organising Committee, has launched a new musical instrument to rival the vuvuzela at next year’s World Cup.
Despite concerns from European supporters about the noise of the vuvuzelas at stadiums, the parties hope the kuduzela, a wind instrument in the shape of a kudu horn, will become an icon associated with the World Cup in SA.
“The kuduzela will not only give visitors a South African experience but a truly African experience as well,” FNB CEO Michael Jordaan said on Tuesday.
SANParks will sell the kuduzelas at airports and game parks, with R3 from the sale of each instrument going to Kids in Park, a conservative education programme. FNB has ordered 150000 kuduzelas which it will give away at its 700 branches, raising R600 000 for the Kids in Parks programme. Danny Jordaan, CEO of the local organising committee, said the instrument would also be sold overseas as 2010 merchandise.
The kuduzela is made largely from recycled plastic from an automotive plant. The kudu horn was used to call people together for gatherings, or for battle.
“Now the kuduzela will fulfil the same role,” said SANParks CE David Mabunda. “The kuduzela will call all South Africans, international guests and soccer fans to SA for what is set to be a spectacular tournament in 2010 and, appropriately, it will be calling the ‘warring parties’ to the symbolic battlefield of soccer.”
The kudu horn, he said, emits a sound that some have called the “true sound of the savanna”. “However, the kuduzela … sounds like a trumpeting elephant and en masse the sound is more like a massive herd of elephants trumpeting and when there’s action near the goal mouth you will hear the elephants going really crazy,” said Mr. Mabunda.