On 7 July, 2006, the official Logo for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa was unveiled in the German city of Berlin. The ceremony itself drew a lot of dignitaries with the likes of South Africa president Thabo Mbeki, FIFA president Sepp Blatter, CAF president Issa Hayatou and the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

But is South Africa really prepared to host the tournament? “We said we will host in 2010 the most successful FIFA World Cup and we will keep that promise,” maintained the nation’s president Thabo Mbeki during the launching of the 2010 World Cup emblem.

South Africa has previously hosted the Rugby World Cup, the Cricket World Cup and the Women’s Golf World Cup; but with the football World Cup coming up in four years’ time it is rather more challenging in terms of preparation as they strive towards a successful hosting of one of the most prestigious sporting events in the world.

South Africa is now set to be in the spotlight and billions of dollars will be spent on stadiums and on upgrades of the country’s airport and transport systems, among other things.

The matches are to be played in ten stadiums throughout South Africa. There are plans to upgrade five stadiums and build two new ones for the semi-finals, in the Indian Ocean city of Durban and south-coast city of Cape Town. Others will also be put up in Polokwane, Nelspruit and Port Elizabeth.

Other factors such as transportation, communications and security are things the South African officials will have to be working on ahead of the 2010 finals.

In terms of communications, there needs to be an upgrade of the country’s 30-year-old broadcasting infrastructure. The state-owned national broadcasting signal distributor, Sentech, is expected to be upgraded to meet the necessary standards for a proper World Cup coverage, an investment that is worth billions of dollars.

Though Africa had to wait for eight decades since the first World Cup before winning the opportunity to host the premier sporting event, the entire continent is expected to back the South Africans in their quest for a successful hosting.

African teams believe the time has come when they should make most of the tournament – on African soil. Excitement and confidence are already beginning to fill the air in anticipation of a brighter finals.

“Africa is ready, Africa’s time has come, Africa is calling. Come to Africa in 2010,” said Mbeki.

From a business point of view, there are more commercial prospects for the South Africa finals, which have already attracted more marketers than the finals in Germany did.

“The market trusts Africa,” FIFA president Sepp Blatter recently said. “The contracts we have already signed for 2010 are higher than the contracts for 2006 in Germany, by about 25%.”

It’s now a race against time for South Africa to execute the entire necessary projects before 2010.

If many of the above developments may have come as good news to millions of South Africans, the disappointing thing is that the national team, Bafana Bafana, have sunk into oblivion over the last few years and are still facing difficulties in regaining their form.

Coming into the limelight after the apartheid period in the early '90s, South Africa quickly made a mark on the African continent in terms of football. They created a positive impression by successfully hosting the 1996 African Nations Cup finals and won it.

They have also featured in all of the succeeding African Nations Cup finals. In 1998, they won the silver medal and in 2000 they won the bronze medal. In 2002, they crashed out during the quarter-finals and in 2004 they faced an exit in the first round. If that first round outing was so disappointing, worse was to come.

In Egypt earlier this year, they again faced a first round exit at the Nations Cup. Their dismal outing in a group that also included Guinea, Tunisia and Zambia, saw them lose all their group matches without scoring a single goal, something that surprised many, not only South Africans.

On the World Cup front, Bafana Bafana have made two appearances in the finals. They made their World Cup debut in France in 1998 where they faced a first round exit. They made another appearance in 2002 when the tournament was co-hosted by Korea/Japan, but again faced an early exit.

They have now qualified for the 2010 finals automatically as hosts and unless they start preparing the team well ahead of time, we might see another disaster for the South Africans.

Much of the task is now left to all the parties involved -- the government, the local organizing committee and the footballing authorities -- to ensure the smooth preparatory processes on infrastructures, security, communication, the national team and all that it takes to successfully host a major tournament like the World Cup.

The 2006 World Cup is now history, and misery on the part of the South Africans should be avoided, come 2010.

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