It's worse when you have a surround sound system set up, I keep looking over my shoulder for fear of being mauled by, what sounds like, an angry swarm of hornets.
First of all these plastic bastards aren't even cultural, they were used by the Mexicans in the seventies and have been a South African "tradition" for little more than 5 years. Its about as African as a Soweto-based Burger King.
Secondly, noone is trying to 'de-africanize' the World Cup. We're all embracing the zaniness of the African supporters; their passion and enthusiasm is doing nothing but contribute to the whole spectacle. Tens of thousands of idiots blowing monotones out of some plastic tube, however, is destroying the ambience of football matches, it's drowning out the atmosphere and ruining the experience for countless people watching all over the world. We won't have another world cup in Africa for quite a while, so as a host nation, South Africa needs to step up and ban these god-awful things so we look back on it with fond memories.