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Julian Drew finds out about benefits the Bid company believes the Olympics will bring
WHEN Cape Town began developing a philosophy to underpin its bid for the 2004 Olympic Games it realised the Games would have to make a significant contribution towards redressing the imbalances of the apartheid era.
“If it was simply about 16 days of sport then we’d have no business doing it but it’s precisely because it’s about much more than that that we are going ahead,” says the bid’s press officer, Paul Johnson.
“The Games are about the R20-billion boost to the economy, the 100 000 jobs that will be created, the new sports facilities in the disadvantaged areas, creating a modern public transport system and many, many more such issues.”
Although Cape Town does not compare favourably with most of the other bidding cities in terms of its current infrastructure, the Bid Company believes the prospects of success are excellent because of the bid’s unique focus: “The starting point was that it must be a developmental bid,” said Peter de Tolly who heads the planning team.
“We have a very specific social, economic and environmental agenda which stems from the government’s Reconstruction and Development Programme.”
The Bid Company is calling its developmental approach “the fourth pillar of Olympism” – the three official pillars of the Olympic Movement being sport, culture and the environment – which it believes will give it a winning edge over the other competing cities.
As with any project of this size, says the Bid Company, some people are opposed but two opinion polls at the end of last year showed that 80% of the city’s population supported the bid. That support has been carefully built through an ongoing campaign that engages communities, schools, the youth and the public at large in critical debate.
The Bid Company has held public meetings in 30 different communities and visited over 100 schools throughout the region. There are regular phone-in shows on local radio stations and countless other meetings at which Bid company members have given presentations.
“Our support comes from an understanding of the issues related to the bid and that’s really what we are looking for. We don’t want a core of people out there who blandly support the bid. We want to acknowledge and address people’s concerns,” says Johnson.
Many of those concerns have been related to the cost and funding of the Games. The Bid Company, in the candidature file – the document which it has submitted to the IOC – predicts revenues of nearly R6-billion from staging the Games, leaving a surplus of R100-million after allowing for operating costs. The revenues are to come from television rights, international and local sponsorships, ticket sales and other sources.
An estimated 43% of the capital costs of providing the sports facilities required for the Games are to come from these revenues, says the company, with enough to provide R150-million for a housing fund and R100- million for maintaining the facilities after the Games.
One of the most important elements for staging a successful Olympics is the transportation network.
Funding for upgrading the local transport system is planned to come from accelerated government spending: R900-million from the transport budget, which would have been spent regardless of the bid in the Western Cape between 2004 and 2010, will be brought forward and spent before 2004 should Cape Town win the Games.
The balance of funds for the construction of specific facilities for the Games will come, says the document, from the private sector, national government and the various levels of local government.
The local government share will work out at R43-million a year until 2004, which is no more than the current budget for sports facilities.