OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday
THIS weeks fatal stampede at a Johannesburg football match has darkened many South Africans’ hopes of winning the right to host the World Cup in 2010, but everyone from President Thabo Mbeki down maintains it will make no difference.
The stampede at Ellis Park stadium came as a tidal wave of people surged over a security fence and into the already full stands in a bid to watch a crucial premier league match between the Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, leaving 43 dead and 160 injured.
Mbeki, who appointed Judge Bernard Ngoepe to head a probe into the catastrophe, told reporters he did not believe it would affect South Africa’s World Cup chances.
”Soccer is played in South Africa every day,” he said. ”Ours is not the only country that has had that kind of thing happen.”
He pointed to the disaster at Sheffield Wednesday’s ground, Hillsborough in England, in 1989 which left 96 people dead.
”It doesn’t mean soccer in the United Kingdom is not capable of handling soccer crowds,” he said.
Sports Minister Ngconde Balfour, asked if the tragedy would hurt South Africa’s chances, replied: ”Not at all. You have got to look at this from a global perspective.
”As much as we don’t want this to happen, it has happened before to other countries. I don’t think this should be see as a drawback for our bid for 2010.”
Football officials took the same line.
Business Day newspaper begged to differ, proclaiming: ”It could fatally damage South Africa’s hopes of hosting the soccer World Cup in 2010.”
The subject is a sensitive one in South Africa, because it was set to win the 2006 Cup bid last year before Oceania delegate Charlie Dempsey abstained against his confederation’s instructions, handing victory to Germany.
Sepp Blatter, president of football’s world governing body FIFA, declared in Addis Ababa on April 1 that Africa would definitely host the 2010 Cup, confirming a decision by FIFA’s powerful executive committee in Zurich on March 15.
Blatter sent his condolences to the South African Football Association, but abstained from making any comment on South Africa’s chances. – AFP
ZA*NOW:
Top-level probe into soccer tragedy April 12, 2001
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