COUNTDOWN

2010: neighbours vying for share of the pie

April 14 2007 at 04:01PM

Competition is fierce among South Africa's neighbours to attract business around the 2010 Soccer World Cup, the Saturday Star newspaper reported.

Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland and Zimbabwe are all vying for a share of the World Cup pie by seeking to attract qualifying teams to train in their countries in the run-up to the tournament, the Johannesburg paper reported.

The potential tourism revenue of the World Cup has also not gone unnoticed in the region, prompting governments to step up plans for a single travel visa for the region.

Botswana's Environment, Wildlife and Tourism Minister Kitso Mokaila said he was optimistic that his country would benefit from World Cup tourism.
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Botswana has also established a task force to come up with a plan on how to woo qualifying teams to train in the country, the Star reported.

Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe are also looking at ways to improve sports training and tourism facilities.

The world football body FIFA has given Swaziland R10-million towards the upgrade of its only national stadium, Somholo, and the country also expects to have a new international airport by 2010.

Cash-strapped Zimbabwe has plans to built a new world-class soccer stadium as well.

Like South Africa, which has hired former Brazil coach Carlos Alberto Parreira to whip its Bafana Bafana side into shape, countries in the region are also keen to boost the performance of their teams for the first World Cup on the African continent.

The 14-country Southern African Development Community has plans to launch a new under-17 football tournament in 2007 and hoped to get at least four teams from the region into the finals, the Star said.

Meanwhile, in the host country, a bid by an environmental group to halt construction of a new 68 000-seater stadium in Cape Town received a setback Friday when it failed to get an urgent High Court hearing.

Cape Town Environmental Protection Association will make a fresh attempt on Monday to obtain an urgent interdict staying the partial demolition of the current Green Point stadium, the first phase in the building of the 2.9-billion-rand arena.

The old arena had already been 75 percent demolished by Friday. - Sapa-dpa

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