South Africa and FIFA Welcome World Cup Fans

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South African midfielder Siphiwe Tshabalala celebrates after scoring against Mexico

Earlier today, World Cup fans in Johannesburg, South Africa were awoken to a partly cloudy and cold day. Despite the overcast, they refused to allow the weather to dampen their spirits along the parade route.

The host, South African had about 1500 artists, dancers, musicians and performers prepared to welcomed the World to Africa – the Africa of hope. They sang and danced to songs ranging from uQongothwane – a song made famous by the late “Mama Africa” Miriam Makeba.Zolani Mkhiva, the ‘Poet of Africa’ and the youngest practitioner of one of the oldest oral traditions in Africa, ‘kubonga’ (praise singing) cried out during a welcome ceremony, “Fellow Africans, today we rewrite history. Because we have brought the World Cup to our soil.” Chicago's own R&B Artist R Kelly and the Soweto Spiritual Singers brought down the house with Kelly's song ‘Sign of Victory’.

What is FIFA or the World Cup?

Every four years since the first tournament in 1930, the world gathered in a host country for series of Football matches (soccer as the American calls it) to watch the most widely viewed sporting event in the world. Well, the World Cup was interrupted in 1942 and 1946 when boys from Germany, United States and other countries with sophisticated weapons decided to go to war instead of play sports.

Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is the name of the sport's governing body. The World Cup is used interchangeably to refer to as 'FIFA World Cup', 'Football World Cup' or 'Soccer World Cup'.

The teams are divided into groups as follows:

Group A
South Africa
Mexico
Uruguay
France

Group B
Argentina
Nigeria
Korea Republic
Greece

Group C
England
USA
Algeria
Slovenia

Group D
Germany
Australia
Serbia
Ghana

Group E
Netherlands
Denmark
Japan
Cameroon

Group F
Italy
Paraguay
New Zealand
Slovakia

Group G
Brazil
Korea DPR
Côte d'Ivoire
Portugal

Group H
Spain
Switzerland
Honduras
Chile