Johannesburg - For South Africa it has been the Cup of Good
Hope.
Bar any eleventh-hour upsets on final day on Sunday, the verdict
on the FIFA Confederations Cup - a test event for next year's World
Cup - has been broadly positive.
The players of the world's top teams, their travelling supporters
and FIFA have all piled praised on the relatively smooth organization
of the eight-nation tournament and the enthusiastic show of support
by South Africans of all hues for the Beautiful Game.
'I thought the organization was really good,' said Gustavo Silva,
26, a production engineer from Sao Paolo in Brazil, who spent a month
in South Africa watching Brazil play the world's top teams and
visiting Cape Town, Kruger National Park and other tourist hotspots.
The trip was Silva's first to the country and continent.
Back in Brazil, South Africa is infamous for its high rates of
violent crime, he said.
But, apart from an incident at a petrol station, in which a
stranger tried to lure him out of his car on false pretences,
possibly in a bid to steal the vehicle, he had no brushes with
criminals, real or suspected.
'It's a beautiful place to visit. Just be alert wherever you go -
like at home!' was his advice to Brazilians planning on attending the
World Cup.
Brazil's star striker Kaka also saw no cause for undue concern.
'Like in Brazil, all anyone ever thinks about are only the violent
and bad things. And it's not true. There are many First World
things,' he exclaimed.
A few days after those remarks, the Brazilian team became the
second team after Egypt to report a theft at their hotel
The Egyptian case, in which around 2,400 dollars in cash was
pinched from players' rooms sparked widespread hand-wringing - until
several newspapers reported that the players had fallen foul of
prostitutes. The Egyptian delegation has vehemently denied those
allegations.
While the tournament passed off without any major security
incident jumpy visiting journalists were unconvinced about South
Africa's security nous.
How could FIFA guarantee the safety of all World Cup visitors?
Were there any no-go areas in the country, they insisted, ignoring
2010 local organizing committee head Danny Jordaan's pleas to 'judge
us on our record.'
Listing its Confederations Cup loves and hates, the Sunday
Independent put 'negative European journalists' in the hate category,
telling them: 'Come back with a better attitude next year or stay
home!'
Complaints by some European players and media about the vuvuzela,
the plastic trumpet enthusiastically blown by South African fans at
games, widened the wedge between the hosts and their critics.
While defending the buzzing as a sign of the passion of fans, FIFA
boss Joseph Blatter said it would be 'discussed' after the
tournament, following complaints from commentators about the noise
'interference.'
Meanwhile, according to Blatter, transport and accommodation are
the areas most needing attention before hundreds of thousands of
visitors arrive for the June 11-July 11 World Cup.
Long delays in stadium park-and-ride systems at the Confed Cup
rammed home the urgency of getting stalled new rapid-bus systems back
on track, particularly in Johannesburg.
FIFA is also increasingly concerned over the shortfall of around
18,000 FIFA-contracted hotel beds for the World Cup as some small
hotel and B+B owners continue to refuse FIFA's terms.
On two other scores, South Africa appears to be well within the
ball park. The national side Bafana Bafana has pulled up its socks,
giving Brazil a hair-raising run for its final place this week in a
performance that will add to the mounting World Cup fever.
And the spirit of interracial unity South Africa hopes to foster
at the Cup is already well in evidence.
Although football is primarily the sport of the black majority,
large numbers of whites pitched up at Confed Cup games, clad in
Bafana green and yellow.
Coming 14 years after the country's first democratic elections
that formally ended apartheid, those scenes of interracial harmony,
said Jordaan, was 'the kind of society we worked hard for, that we
struggled hard for.'
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