Despair to Elation:
There are only a few short months to go before South Africa prepares to welcome football’s elite to the first World Cup on African soil. The Chief Executive Officer of the Local Organising Committee, Dr Danny Jordaan worked hard to bring the tournament to Africa. He was involved in the bid for the 2006 World Cup, which controversially failed when the late Charles Dempsey, Oceania’s representative, ignored the instructions of his federation and abstained rather than support South Africa’s bid, which failed by one vote. Had it been tied as it should have been FIFA President Sepp Blatter would have cast his deciding vote for South Africa. It was a bitter pill for African football to swallow.

Dr Jordaan granted Empower-Sport Magazine an exclusive interview, during which he recalled those hard times. “Well of course it was a huge disappointment,” he said. “It was a technical aberration at that World Cup. South Africa alongside Germany was the two countries best placed to host the World Cup. I think England had tried, but it came down to Germany and South Africa and therefore we had a lot of confidence, but when we lost it was a huge disappointment. We understood that that was a setback, but we must pursue the ideal that Africa must host the World Cup because now it would be over a hundred years since FIFA was established in 1904 and Africa also had the right to host this event, so we prepared for 2010 and I think one must acknowledge the support of the President Sepp Blatter in supporting the African cause in making sure that the World Cup will eventually be hosted on the African continent.”

FIFA introduced the rotation policy to ensure that Africa got its chance and South Africa emerged victorious. Hosting the tournament was part of Jordaan’s vision to promote his country on the world stage. “It was something that we wanted to do because after 1994 there was elections,” said Jordaan. “In 1990 [Nelson] Mandela walked out of prison. ‘94 we had our first democratic elections and one of the things that we had to make sure of is that we must not be forgotten by the international community – rather that South Africa must be discussed at the dinner tables, the lunch tables of the big business companies and I believe that our aim must be to be discussed at every dinner table and coffee table of the world.”

The Event Strategy and Infrastructure:
South Africans including Jordaan realised that sport offered the means to achieve those ends and would engage the new nation as well as unite them. All races love sport in South Africa “We decided to follow a major event strategy,” said Jordaan. “We hosted the Rugby World Cup in 1995, the African Cup of Nations in 1996, 1998 the World Athletics Championship, 2002 and the cricket world cup to sustain a development consciousness of a united nation in our country. We now had the cricket 20/20 World Cup in 2007. We have the motor-racing and a whole host of events. We made a bid for 2004 Olympics, but lost out to Athens. We made a bid for 2006 World Cup, but lost out to Germany and now we are hosting 2010 and what that has done is two things that is important: one is that South Africa was not forgotten after 1994; secondly and perhaps more importantly, through hosting all of those major events there was infrastructure improvement in our country.”

Jordaan is not just talking about sporting infrastructure, although there will be new stadiums and existing ones will be refurbished too. “It was not only the stadiums,” he said. “It was many other things – a number of hotels have been built in our country and investment, direct investment, as well as of course tourism. We have seen an eleven percent annual growth in tourism. In 2007 we went beyond seven million foreign tourists into our country, so I think that through hosting major events we have been quite successful in keeping the focus on our country, developing South Africa as a country, getting the infrastructure improvement, because in most countries in the period of liberation or democracy there is a decline in the infrastructure, especially those countries that went through the decolonisation process. In our case from 1990 to 2008 the infrastructure in our country has improved and is much better. Our economy is much better and we had investment from Vodafone and investment in Standard Bank one of our banks in South Africa and that was over US $12 billion.”

Africa has had its share of stadium disasters and South Africa is no stranger to catastrophe in that department. Jordaan recognises that South Africa’s stadiums must be state-of-the-art and that will require resources. “We are building five new ones,” he said. “We are upgrading one and we have four others. Stadium construction needs skilled managing. What we have done is use a technical group, consisting of architects, civil engineers, etc. so they will go in to make sure that the stadium is built to meet the FIFA requirement that the main requirements are up to standard; the price of cement and bricks and steel and so on won’t be the same between 2004 and 2009. We accept that, but we don’t want profiteering and mark-up, so it is a difficult thing. You need a reliable construction company to give you what you need and it has worked in many cases. We have managed to drive down the cost in some cases. In other cases it is obvious that there are needs to increase the revenue and we accepted that, but I think we have done well and we’ll see when we come to the end. You can also not have the final budget unless all the items have been put out to tender to see the prices, so we are in that process, but so far we originally thought that around 10 billion will complete the stadiums.” Despite his optimism there was a strike that briefly halted the construction. It was eventually resolved and the stadiums were ready for this summer’s Confederation’s Cup as required.“

That will cost 1.5 billion Euros,” said Jordaan, but not all of that will be spent on stadiums alone. “I think we are spending 29.3 million Euros on transport. We will spend 20 million Euros on infrastructure, not only then, but for investment – economic growth within the country.” Tourism and leisure comes to an additional ten percent of the budget for the World Cup. It has been carefully planned, but there are still big problems. The financial meltdown has affected the world and that will almost certainly affect ticket sales and tourism too even though the World Cup will have a unique African flavour to it. International perceptions of the country abroad as a haven for criminals is a problem too, but Jordaan rejects this view of his country and mounts a robust defence of South Africa’s record.

Security Concerns:
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” said Jordaan boldly. He dismissed suggestions that South Africa is a dangerous country and that visitors to the World Cup will not be safe. “If that is true, how do you explain the fact that there are seven million tourists coming into the country?” he asks. “How do you explain that? How do you explain the fact that every aircraft to Johannesburg from London is full every time from Virgin Atlantic to South African Airways and now British Airways as well? All of them are full – every one.”

Jordaan is convinced that South Africa will host a successful and safe World Cup. “We have crime,” he says, “but so do you in Moss Side in Manchester, in Leeds and other places that we read about. We are safe. There is crime everywhere. You see knife murders and gun murders in London. We read about it in South Africa, but we have decided to challenge it. If somebody can tell me that there is no crime in London at all then at least we have discovered the British path to heaven, but I think that we have also showed that it is safe in South Africa. The England soccer team played here. The England rugby team came to play here. Why would it be different if two million people come for a tournament like the World Cup? Why would it be different? I cannot understand that. We hosted the 20/20 world cup and that was in September 2007, so I cannot understand because Manchester United was coming here to South Africa. Barcelona was here. Brasil played here. Argentina played here. Germany played here. The Netherlands played here. Sweden played here. Denmark played here and so the list goes on. A number of countries have played here so I don’t know why we can have all of these major internationals here, but somehow somebody knows it’s not going to be safe. Yes we have crime. There are socio-economic challenges – the lack of housing, education, all of those and then we are dealing with those things.”

But no discussion on South Africa could be complete without touching on racism. South Africa endured the horror of apartheid. The death knell was sounded almost twenty years ago when Mandela walked free and four years later the African National Congress easily won the elections. Has racism been conquered at last?

“You will never defeat racism,” said Jordaan. “Racism is embedded into the country’s history, its struggles, its socio-economic make-up – all of that and so I think South Africa has made great strides and made a lot of progress and in 1976 there was much violence and from there we have become a country at peace, but can we eradicate racism completely? No, but I think we have done very well. I really do.”