He came. He saw the Black Eyed Peas. He urged the US soccer team to conquer England in Saturday’s match.

“It feels great being here,” Vice President Joe Biden said Friday morning to a small gathering of local dignitaries at the US Consulate. “And in the spirit of the Irish, I want to say that we’re going to beat England.”

Mr. Biden lost no time in joining in the playful and relatively harmless nationalist feelings in the Johannesburg air today. On this, the first official game day of the South Africa World Cup, nary a car drives by without the flag of one of the 32 countries competing in this soccer tournament, and none are more plentiful than the flags of South Africa.

From the early hours of the morning, one could hear the sound of those long, plastic trumpets known as vuvuzelas. Those not wearing the jersey of his or her favorite team is either painfully embarrassed about it, or is serving as the grim-faced security detail for Very Important Persons such as, well, Joe Biden.

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One local news organization, the Daily Maverick, has taken to taunting the Mexican team – which faces off against South Africa’s own team this afternoon at 4 pm local time (see the daily schedule). Never mind that the local boys, Bafana Bafana, are ranked 47 in the world, the Daily Maverick declared today to be “Bafana Victory Day.”

“This afternoon all the waiting and uncertainty finally ends, and we learn by just how wide a margin Bafana Bafana will beat Mexico," they wrote in their column Coming up Today. "Conservative prognosticators put the scoreline at 3 - 0, but they're just trying to set expectations low to make for a wilder party afterwards.”

The day began on a somber note, however. The 13-year-old great-granddaughter of Nelson Mandela, Zenani, died Thursday night in a car accident following the 2010 Kickoff Concert in Soweto’s Orlando Stadium. The driver of the car was arrested for drunk driving, and Mr. Mandela announced that he would not be attending the opening ceremony today, as had been planned.

Yet very little seems to keep a tap on the rest of the South African public’s mood. One local news radio station exuberantly, but mistakenly, reported that President Barack Obama was scheduled to arrive in South Africa. As elsewhere in Africa, Mr. Obama is seen here as a hero.

Biden told those gathered at the US Consulate it would be his personal honor, and not his boss’s, to represent the United States at the World Cup, adding with a grin, “The president is really angry. He’s dealing with an oil spill, and I’m dealing with you.”

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