Who needs vuvuzela when you can shout

Under the unrelenting glare of the sun, the National Stadium usually hums like a mechanical hive. For years, the soundtrack of local sport has been the monotonous, plastic drone of the vuvuzela, a noise that fills the ears but often masks the soul of the crowd. But this past weekend, during the Debswana World Athletics Relays Gaborone 26, something shifted.

The plastic gave way to passion. The drone became a heartbeat. The change was so striking that veteran commentator Donald Smith, who led the broadcast alongside Solomon Kakuwa and Thabo Motsokono, took to X to capture the moment.

“The noise inside this stadium is electric. It’s not normal at all. And they are not using horns at all,” he wrote.

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Replying directly, Jeffery Gordon echoed a sentiment long held by many purists: “That part about not using ‘horns’… I’m dying for the days when I can sit in the National Stadium free from the sound of the vuvuzelas, if that’s how it’s spelt. Is it even a word?” Yet the story of the weekend was not only written on the track in lightning-fast times, but in the stands, in the grit and grace of the people. Braving punishing heat across both days, the fans became an endurance act of their own.

Covered in sweat but fuelled by pride, they did more than cheer for Botswana’s blue. They lifted every athlete, from every nation, proving that a well-run race is a language everyone understands. Smith, Kakuwa and Motsokono became conductors, turning 25 000 individuals into a single living instrument.

At one point, Kakuwa led a patriotic call-and-response. The stands erupted into chants of “Blue, Black and White,” before crashing into a thunderous “We have BW” that shook the concrete.

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