Info South Africa

The International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA, for its French acronym) picked Southafrica on May 2004 to celebrate the XIX FIFA Football World Cup 2010. With this election, the World Cup arrives for the first time to the African continent and, particularly, to Nelson Mandela’s territory, one of the main promoters of their application. Basing their candidature on the growing economic development and on the vast international events organization experience (like the Rugby World Cup in 1995), but also characterized for its cultural, ethnic and idiomatic diversity (there are 11 languages officially recognized), Southafrica is, without a doubt, an excellent venue to receive the 450.000 members of the audience that will attend this edition of the Football World Cup. Although the three-capitals country (Pretoria, the administrative region; Bloemfontein, the legal jurisdiction; and Cape Town, the parliament) doesn’t have that much fanaticism over Football like for Rugby or Cricket, two of their most traditional sports, when the remodeling of the southafrican stadiums started, they were finally more aware of the dimensions of the event which they were about to host, and football started to become stronger, especially among children.

Organisation

On May 2004, when Southafrica won the right to be the host for the 2010 World Cup, turning into the first African country to organize the FIFA Football World Cup, a lot of people doubted that it would be able to meet the expectations.
It is true that the tasks to be done are a lot. The creation of 5 new stadiums and reconditioning of 5 existing ones, added to the development of transport and accommodations infrastructure seemed really distant seeing the starting point. However, the inversion done by the southafrican government will let it reach the moment of football’s maximum appointment with all the building works finished.
Without a doubt, and despite there were a lot of speculations due to the delays caused by strikes and recession on the African country, the more than 8400 million of rands (equivalent to around 765 million of euros) destined to the organization of the XIX FIFA Football World Cup 2010 ended up being effective. Although this amount overpasses three times the one on the application’s original budget, it was able to be covered only thanks to the southafrican tax surplus.
After being seriously questioned by the president of the German World Cup Organization Committee 2006 Franz Beckenbauer and backed by the FIFA president Joseph Blatter, Southafrica proved with facts that it’s capable to reach the goal. The satisfying organization of the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup serves as support for the African country that added organization experience with 2010 approaching.
It’s important to point out that the organizer country not only had to do the building works against the clock. Its commitment reaches also the reduction of the criminal rate which beats the country (50.000 murders a year). To do it, it increased its security measurements with more than 10.000 soldiers, taking control over one of the aspects that arouses ,nowadays, most fear all over the world, and guaranteeing, this way, that the 2010 Football World Cup turns into a party.