Siphiweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Buy that man a drink.

After his spectacular opening goal for South Africa it's most likely that Siphiwe Tshabalala, fittingly a Sowetan playing in his local stadium, will never have to buy himself another drink.

Ever.

On Friday, inside Soccer City's Calabash, the World Cup kicked off with unique stew of noise, colour, and emotion.

"The FIFA World Cup is in Africa," announced Sepp Blatter, FIFA's President, before kick-off.

The sound of thousands of vuvuzelas drowned out the rest of his speech.

That's a good thing.

Not necessarily because what Blatter said was blather (for all his faults, bringing the World Cup to Africa will be his eternal positive legacy) but, in a highly corporate, TV-driven, sponsor-ruled event, the vuvuzela is uncontrollable.

It remains a symbol of people power, even if those people do get annoying after a while.

(An example of life in the FIFA bubble: while attempting to buy a local SIM card for a mobile phone during the week, the only acceptable form of payment was a VISA card. Want cash instead? The International Broadcasting Centre's ATMs only cough up moolah to ... VISA cards. Want to use another card to access cash? There's a shopping mall 20 minutes drive away.)

Tragically, the much-anticipated presence of Nelson Mandela at the opening game never eventuated. Old and frail (he is now 91 years old) the man locals call "Madiba" was to decide if he would travel to Soccer City on the morning of the game.

Unfortunately, he awoke on Friday to heartbreak.

His 13-year-old great granddaughter Zenani had been killed the night before in a car accident, returning from the World Cup opening concert in Soweto that featured Shakira and Alicia Keys.

Police say the car she was travelling in left the road and hot a barrier. The driver has been accused of being drunk at the wheel.

For most non-South Africans at Soccer City, any pretence of neutrality was left outside in the gridlocked streets.

Mexico were noble opponents, at times frighteningly not following the script.

Coach Javier Aguirre showed he is the anti-Verbeek, sending Mexico out to play with three strikers up top and telling them to attack the home team.

Referee Ravshan Irmatov, perhaps now Uzbekistan's most famous person, let the game flow and got all his calls correct.

But as much as neutrals attempted to hold the middle line, when Siphiwe Tshabalala launched his rocket into the back of the net at the 55-minute mark for the tournament's opening goal, few could not feel South Africa's outpour of emotion.

The goal was for a country that has come so far in the 15 years since apartheid was killed off.

The goal was for the country's living icon, Madiba, Nelson Mandela.

The goal was for the people, dancing in Soweto, Cape Town, and Mohklakano, the remote township Australia's World Cup bid team visited on Wednesday.

But more importantly, the goal was for the future, potentially a bright one for South Africa.

Emotional much? Me?

One, two, three...

Siphiweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!