Bricks and Mortar:

South Africa won the right to host Africa's first ever World Cup. The Organising Committee faced a race conducted in public to be ready on time. The country had suffered notorious stadium disasters before, especially the one at Ellis Park, which left 43 people dead in April 2001. Africa was no stranger to such tragedies.

The designs and construction had to be right and it had to be delivered to budget. "Stadium construction needs skilled managing," the CEO of the Organising Committee, Dr Danny Jordaan, told us. "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."

There was still plenty to do and much to think about. "The price of cement and bricks and steel and so on won’t be the same between 2004 and 2009," he said. "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."

Despite this construction workers went on strike as the World Cup loomed large. The dispute was resolved. Tickets were provided to those workers and the stadiums were completed in time.

Costs and Spreading The World Cup Experience:

"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," said Jordaan. "You can also not have the final budget unless all the items have been put out to tender to see the prices, but we originally thought that around 10 billion will complete the stadiums."

But how did that compare to 2006? "Germany spent more on the stadiums," said Jordaan, who was determined to spread the World Cup experience as far afield as possible.

"We are looking at the training venues," he said. "We are going to have at least four training venues and some of them will be in the country. We will encourage the teams to go to them. These are world class facilities and even if they can’t afford them, they will have access to them. It is something that is very important and we will encourage people to use the training pitches.

Organisation:

Jordaan recognised that South Africa would have to cater for an influx of football tourists. He had a plan. "What we have done is that we are approaching our federation because we found in Europe that visitors must have accommodation," he said.

Planning for guests was paramount. "If you just sell tickets, then you have people arriving in the country with no-one to take care of them, so if you want to have good organisation, then the travel agents should meet their guests, take them to the hotel and make sure that arrangements are taken care of," said Jordaan. "Somebody is taking care of them and that’s the way to go. I was talking to the travel agents to look at the prices."

Nevertheless, greed reared its head. Hoteliers in Angola spotted an opportunity to hike up prices for the African Cup of Nations – a mistake as many journalists and fans decided not to go. Sadly some South Africans did the same and tried to cash in on the World Cup, offering over-priced accommodation. Jordaan's plans were thwarted and Africa's World was not the unqualified success it should have been, but it was a success.