Tickets for South Africa’s 2010 Soccer World Cup will bear both the apartheid-era names of cities and the new ones, reflecting the nation’s evolution while avoiding confusing visitors, its organisers said on Tuesday.
South Africa’s government has been changing the names of some cities since the end of apartheid in 1994 but the new names are often not known abroad — the country’s administrative capital Pretoria, for example is now officially called Tshwane.
”Fifa in our board meeting today came up with a reasonable solution taking into account the evolution and the transformation in this country,” the chairperson of the World Cup’s organising committee Irvin Khoza told a news conference.
Name changing is highly sensitive in South Africa. The government has championed efforts to rename towns or street names to get rid of apartheid-era names and better reflect the country’s African character, but that has angered some white South Africans, who fear their history is being eroded.
Road signs will also bear internationally-known names to make it easier for visitors as many maps and guide books still use the old names, the World Cup organisers said.
The first African country to host the tournament, South Africa is expecting up to 3,5-million people to take part in the month-long event.
Fifa, world soccer’s governing body, is working to ensure that public broadcasters in all African countries will show all matches for the 2010 World Cup, general secretary Jerome Valcke told the same news conference.
”We are not organising the World Cup in South Africa to have no one in Africa watch the World Cup,” Valcke said. ”It will be on public television, that’s our commitment,” he said.
South Africa’s Telkom company announced on Tuesday it would give $36-million-worth of telecommunication infrastructure as sponsorship for the event. – Reuters