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‘We are not going to war, but simply to a soccer competition to enjoy ourselves,' says Mcgluwa

Joe Mcgluwa, the ID Spokesperson for Sport, has advised the English company Protektorvest, which is marketing stab-proof vests to soccer fans, reportedly to protect them from South Africans at the World Cup, ‘to instead give the vests to us so that we will not be stabbed by notorious English football hooligans. 

‘All over Europe and around the world, English football hooligans are loathed and feared. As recently as August last year a 44-year-old was stabbed in the chest at a West Ham-Millwall match, while hundreds of fans threw bricks and bottles at riot police outside Upton Park,' Mr Mcgluwa says. 

‘It is common knowledge that every World Cup sees thousands of English soccer hooligans being deported or subjected to banning orders. 

‘With a shift in marketing tack by Protektorvest this vest could save many, many lives. Not only could it protect English football fans from each other, but it could also protect visitors to England from the thousands of drunken yobs, skinheads and football hooligans that daily lurk in the dark corners of England's streets. 

‘The Independent Democrats strongly condemns the kind of cynical thinking that led to the manufacture of this vest. This is an insult to Africa as a whole - we are not going to war, but simply to a soccer competition to enjoy ourselves, something South African soccer fans are actually capable of doing,' says Mcgluwa. 

The ID Member of Parliament says that while ‘crime is certainly a huge problem in South Africa, research has shown that it is the result of the massive inequalities in our society.

‘These inequalities are the result of hundreds of years of colonialism and oppression, something this English company should be a lot more sensitive to,' Mcgluwa says.