"It's really happening!": disbelief in SA a week before WC (Feature)

By Clare Byrne Jun 3, 2010, 13:45 GMT

Johannesburg - Even as the teams began arriving in South Africa for the World Cup last week local officials had to pinch themselves to make sure it - a World Cup in Africa - was really happening.

For some, the realization only hit when they saw Brazilian striker Kaka walk down the gangway at Johannesburg airport.

'The arrival of Brazil gives great confidence to all South Africans that this World Cup is really happening,' Irvin Khoza, chairman of the World Cup local organizing committee said, apparently still gripped by disbelief.

Ironically the first team to arrive came from Australia - the country that was reportedly put on standby by World Cup organizing body FIFA to step in and host the tournament if South Africa proved inept.

'We didn't like that! (FIFA's threat of a Plan B host),' commentator John Robbie recalls in a World Cup message on Johannesburg's popular 702 radio station.

With a week to go and the last of the flags being unfurled at the country's airports and ten World Cup stadiums, such doubts and threats appear like distant memories.

After years of being stuck in snarling traffic caused by roadworks, South Africans are again cruising along enlarged, smoother highways.

In Johannesburg, people who hadn't taken public transport in decades are also embracing a new bus rapid-transit system that deposits fans outside the city's two World Cup stadiums.

On June 8, three days before kick-off between South Africa and Mexico in Johannesburg, a new high-speed train that will run between the city's main airport and Sandton hotel district will further ease the circulation of tens of thousands of fans.

The Gautrain was one of the projects whose completion on time had, at one point, appeared in jeopardy.

'Today I'm confident that we have created history. What we have promised we have delivered,' a triumphant Khoza said on Tuesday.

From a commercial perspective, the first World Cup on the continent has also delivered, says FIFA.

'Commercially it has been a success,' FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke said on Thursday.

'In fact, we have increased our income by 50 per cent since 2006 in Germany to 2010 in South Africa,' he said.

Most of the money comes from the sale of broadcasting rights, not the tickets, but there too there was good news for the hosts this week.

At 97 per cent of close to 3 million tickets to the 64 games sold, South Africa has passed out Germany in percentage terms, Valcke said.

A surge in patriotic fervour sparked by markedly improved performances from the national team - and the availability of cheaper tickets for locals - saw South Africans rush to buy up tickets when they went on sale for cash in April.

All told, South Africans have bought nearly 1.3 million tickets - and probably as many miniature flags in the country's rainbow colours for their car windows.

'It makes one proud, so proud to see the national flag all over the streets of South Africa,' Aaron Mokoena, captain of hosts Bafana Bafana (Boys Boys) told the Sowetan newspaper recently.

The visiting teams too have also been warmly welcomed - and their special requests accommodated by their hotels.

For the Socceroos, it's vegemite, a dark-brown treacle-like sandwich paste made from yeast extract. For Argentina's flamboyant coach and former star player Diego Maradona, nothing less than a heated loo would do.