Headline PH: South Africa revels in its World Cup moment

JOHANNESBURG – Soccer's stars have converged on South Africa from across the globe, but on the eve of the World Cup it is the host nation — with all its flaws and all its wonders — that has seized the spotlight.

Crime is rampant, in shantytowns and posh suburbs. An HIV-AIDS epidemic rages. Yet the welcome for the world — from Cape Town to Soweto — couldn't be warmer, or more proud.

Blaring their plastic trumpets, or "vuvuzelas," and displaying their multicolored flag on their cars and their homes and themselves, South Africans are embracing this historic moment. It's by far their boldest foray onto the world stage since Nelson Mandela formally ended the apartheid era by winning the presidency in 1994.

"It has unified all South Africa," said Irvin Khoza, chairman of the local organizing committee. "It doesn't matter if you're black or white, or if you're close to the sport or not. Everybody in this country is wearing the flag."

The four-week, 32-team tournament opens Friday with South Africa's national squad — a longshot to bookmakers but a favorite to adoring local fans who call it Bafana Bafana — taking on Mexico at Soccer City, the 94,700-seat stadium rising amid old gold mines between Johannesburg and Soweto.

It will be the first time the world's most-watched sporting event is held anywhere in Africa, where soccer fever runs deep, and it takes place in a country that for decades was an international sports outcast, boycotted because of its racist policies.

Brazil and Spain are the favorites to win the title. Other popular teams, according to a worldwide survey released this week by Nielsen Media Research, include former champions Argentina, England and Germany — along with the United States, which was picked to win by 46 percent of North Americans.

Even enigmatic North Korea is here, its unheralded and longshot team qualifying for a World Cup for the first time since 1966 amid a flare-up of tension with its neighbor and fellow tournament entry, South Korea.

A few top stars are absent due to injury, but England's Wayne Rooney is here, as is Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo. Argentina has arguably the world's best player, Lionel Messi, and the most flamboyant coach, Diego Maradona.

Estimates vary as to how many foreign visitors will come — perhaps 350,000 or 400,000. When ticket sales lagged last month, organizers made more of them available to South Africans, and now nearly all have been purchased.

First-time visitors, if they venture beyond the hotels and stadiums, will see a land of dramatic contrasts: first-world luxury and infrastructure closely coexisting with squalid shacks, a dazzlingly varied landscape of jagged mountains and unspoiled beaches, deserts and vineyards and wildlife preserves. There are 10 stadiums in nine cities across South Africa, with two of them — Soccer City and the long-established 62,500-seat Ellis Park — in Johannesburg.

By DAVID CRARY,
AP National Writer

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