Johannesburg, June 21 (inditop.com) They’re gaudy, they’re fun and they’re poised to become the fashion statement of the football World Cup next year.
Of all the paraphernalia surrounding football in South Africa, the
pimped-up construction hats, or makarapas, worn by devotees of the game are the weirdest and most wonderful. Cut, twisted and painted into fabulous headdresses, they give the wearer a look that is part sorcerer, part court jester.
At South Africa’s games in the Confederations Cup, the warm-up tournament for the World Cup currently underway across the country, rows of makarapa-wearing supporters blowing noisily on vuvuzela (plastic trumpets) provide as much entertainment as the players.
The makarapa dates back to 1979, according to the man credited with making the first one.
Alfred Baloyi, 53, a die-hard supporter of the Kaizer Chiefs, a premier
league club from Soweto, had the idea while sitting in a stadium.
“Someone threw a bottle and hit someone on the head,” says Baloyi, sitting in a dark corner of his shack in a squatter camp outside Johannesburg, where he still makes the colourful crowns.
At his next game, Baloyi, who worked as a cleaner at the time in Limpopo province, wore his work safety helmet, which he decorated with football imagery.
As the helmets gained currency among club football fans, he began cutting them and bending them into fantastical shapes.
Three decades ago he was making two or three a day and trying to sell them on the street.
Now, as more and more companies cotton on to the possibility of using
makarapas as a branding tool, Baloyi has gone into partnership with a
sports marketing specialist to begin producing his helmets on a commercial scale.
In a warehouse in downtown Johannesburg, dozens of young men in orange
overalls are working on an order of 190 makarapas for an egg producer.
First, a blue German robot called a Motoman cuts the outline design in the helmet. For the egg helmet, it takes of all 62 seconds.
The helmet is then heated to smooth the cut edges and bent into, or out
of, shape, gaining a dribbling footballer on top and “ears” at the side for the company logo.
Miniature footballs, vuvuzelas, bicycle bells and other accessories can
All be piled on top to add altitude and value.
The helmet then passes into the hands of the artists, seated at big tables covered in sawn-off drinks cans filled with paint, like a kindergarten make-and-do class.
A basic makarapa costs about 200 rand ($24.82) but models with all the
Bells and whistles can cost 800 rand and more.
As the orders pour in from restaurants, newspaper groups, tourism
councils, Rapid Mass Prototyping (RMP), as the company
