David Makoeya was a 61-year-old man who lived in Limpopo Province, Republic of South Africa. Like any sports fan would be, he was excited about the world’s biggest sporting event coming to his nation, and he wanted to watch Germany play Australia.
Unfortunately, his wife and two adult children were at home also and they were watching a gospel show which had not yet ended. Makoeya asked for the remote control to change the TV channel to the Germany game, and was refused. So he got up to change the channel by hand.
You have now reached the point in Makoeya’s story when his wife and two adult children beat him to death, apparently by repeatedly bashing his head against the wall.
There may have been some penalty kicks, too. I haven’t seen the box score yet.
One presumes that the remainder of the family, in addition to being unenthusiastic about soccer, considered themselves to be good Christians, which, after all, is why they wanted to watch the rest of the religious programming rather than the World Cup. Of course, just because they considered themselves good Christians doesn’t mean they quite got the whole “Thou Shalt Not Kill” part of the religion. And one suspects that there may have been just a little bit more family dysfunction in the mix here than mere religious fanaticism clashing with sports fanaticism.
By the way, Die Mannshaft* defeated the Socceroos, 4:0 in what turns out to have been the highest-scoring game of the tournament so far.
Maybe if it had been the RSA team playing, something could have been worked out. But for now, the end score looks like it’s going to be:
* “Die Mannshaft” means “The Team.” A beautifully creative name from the same beautifully creative nation that gave us Dadaism and inspired the Soviet School of architectural design.
