Claims that South Africa could lose the 2010 World Cup were ”laughable” and ”absolute nonsense”, said Danny Jordaan, the chief executive of the local organising committee for the event.
”What has changed since we won the World Cup? Why will we suddenly now lose it?” Jordaan asked from Germany.
”We must be serious about how we present our country to the outside world. We are not serious.”
Jordaan also said he was ”not interested” in stories of that nature.
”I heard about the story, but I’m really not interested in it.”
He was reacting to a newspaper report that the international soccer management body, Fifa, was working on a back-up plan to move the event to Australia.
Reasons cited for the possibility that South Africa might lose the opportunity to present the World Cup were violent crime, a third world public transport system, HIV/Aids and insufficient accommodation.
The newspaper also reported that Jordaan’s standard answer that everything was going according to plan and was ahead of schedule was leading to increasing cynicism.
Earlier in the week African National Congress MP and chairperson of Parliament’s transport portfolio committee Jeremy Cronin criticised the government’s transport policies.
”We’ve got a very, very substantial crisis around transport mobility and accessibility,” he told journalists at a Cape Town Press Club meeting.
Cronin said transport policy in the 1990s had proved ”disastrous”.
”I’m afraid to say that in the first decade of ANC government, transport was a terribly neglected area.” – Sapa