2010 World Cup: Catalyst or Catastrophy

South Africa has been awarded the hosting of the 2010 World Cup Soccer, by FIFA.

Multi billion rand facilities are well underway as well as major upgrades to the country's public transport infrastructure.

Safety and Security plans have also been defined which includes some very innovative ideas such as

• Foreign nation's visitors will be able to identify police officers from their own country at the event (dressed in the official uniforms of that country, conversant in the languages of that country)
• Spy planes flying overhead, and massive camera monitoring centers and response teams

However, considering that SA is the crime capital of the world, will all of the measures to be implemented really guarantee an acceptible level of risk for our foreign guests ?

Now lets play devils advocate, and examine three seperate doomsday scenarios:

The conspiracy theory guys will love this...

DOOMSDAY SCENARIO 1: FIFA retracts the 2010 from South Africa
Although it has been affirmed that SA will be hosting, there are backup nations on "stand-by" (not officially supported by FIFA) that could take over the hosting should SA not be ready.

Imagine crime does not improve much over the next two years, and lets say that the international community does not buy into our proposed security solutions.

A last minute withdrawel of the 2010 hosting from SA would be catastrophic. We have already sunken billions into the project, and it would be a massive blow to citizen morale.

DOOMSDAY SCENARIO 2: 2010 Becomes a PR disaster
All goes well, and we host the event.
However, despite all the security measures in place, several high profile visitors are raped, murdered and robbed at gun point (common occurances here in SA).

The PR fallout from this could be massive.

The long term damage to SA's reputation would be hard to recover from.

DOOMSDAY SCENARIO 3: 2010 Becomes a financial disaster
Due to the fact the contracts are awared based on race criteria (called economic empowerment or BEE) massive inefficiencies are introduced.

Also we have to spend more on security due to our obnormally high crime situation.

What if, after all the costs are tallied and compared to the financial benifits of 450 000 fans visiting brings to the country, we come out with a BIG MINUS ?

Simply due to inefficiencies and structural problems (security spend) we do not manage to conduct the event at breakeven or better ?

Then SA will be left with a massive debt overhang

Summury
Several things could go wrong with 2010. But will they ?

here is another thinking man's blog on the topic:
http://eyeoncrime.co.za/?q=node/170