Sunday, February 16, 2025

Go on and Diski dance to the world cup

The week of October 5th has been declared the week of soccer in Africa’s most watched reality show, Big Brother Africa 4, which is currently on running.

The idea was created so that the South African tourism board could sponsor the “Diski Dance challenge”.

The diski dance is the official dance for the world cup to be held in South-Africa come 2010.

The Diski Dance, which apparently takes its inspiration from Diski football, has been described as “unique and flamboyant a football style as vuvuzelas are trumpeting and triumphant”.

The dance was officially launched in May 2009, with public space demonstration of the dance, which allegedly attracted hordes of delegates and got many of them joining the fun and bopping along with the diski dancers.

The dance was caught on video and can be viewed by all on you tube.
The 60 second Diski Dance TV commercial will also be aired on different programmes that have popular appeal in pay-as-you-watch channels such as MNET, Africa Magic plus, Channel O Africa, Africa Magic, MNET Series Africa.
On Saturday 10 October, the housemates will be taught how to do the Diski Dance by a South African Tourism choreographer and Sunday 11 October the housemates will have a
“Diski dance-off.”

Zakumi, the official 2010 FIFA World Cup Mascot, will be on hand to select the best diski dancing housemate who will win an all expense paid holiday at a luxury resort, Sun City and the majestic Magaliesberg in the North West Province, inclusive of spa treatments, a hot air balloon ride, a sunset boat cruise and quad biking courtesy of the North West Parks and Tourism Board.

“South Africa won the right to stage the 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament but as we have consistently maintained, Africa is the host. As such, we want to excite the rest of the continent about the 2010 FIFA World Cup which is now less than a year away and invite them to celebrate the victory of this event and give tourists and spectators a truly African welcome and experience,” says Phumi Dhlomo, Regional Director: Africa at South African Tourism.

The competition will run until the end of the Big Brother 4 show. The next leg of the competition will call on viewers to upload their dance moves and also stand a chance to win a holiday to SA.
The objective of this development was to market the Diski Dance to the rest of the world so that by the time the world cup kicks off, everyone would know how to do the diski dance.

South African tourism also wanted to create excitement and hype around the soccer world cup to be held in South Africa come 2010. According to Lebo Zulu, they also wanted to sell the Diski Dance as an African spectacular that could be learned by anyone across the world.

“And what welcoming hosts we will be if we can all dance to one to one rhythm,” said Zulu.

South African Tourism had launched the 2010 Diski Dance Campaign to a global audience, early last year, inviting the world to join in to South Africa’s unique rhythm and to celebrate the 2010 FIFA World Cup by doing the Diski Dance.

All of this as an effort by the tourism body to excite Africans about 2010 FIFA World Cup and prepare them to give visitors coming to the continent next year, what they call a truly African welcome.

“We want this dance to infiltrate the whole of Africa. It should be to 2010 what the Mexican wave is to football: a display of unity and celebration by people from all over the world,” concluded Dhlomo.

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