Jo'Burg Days: The World Cup
A jubilant Barbara Durlacher welcomes the start of the World Cup tournament in her homeland, South Africa.
Well, The Big Day is finally here! After six years of planning, and it seems sixty-times six years of over-heated arguments and huge tenders being allocated to (again, seemingly) The Wrong People, the first momentous day of the Soccer World Cup is here at last.
The most important link in the still-to-be-completed network of the famous high-speed Gautrain between Sandton and the recently improved and enhanced O.R. Tambo airport has been completed and is up and running and the stadia in all the main centres are ready and waiting. Even the gigantic upgrading and improving of the roads between Johannesburg and Pretoria and the periphery of Gauteng’s most important economic hub is either complete, or if not complete, is in sufficiently usable condition for the intensive work and repairs to be suspended for the duration of the World Cup and…
WE ARE READY!
Project Managers, Civil Engineers, manufacturers, suppliers and workers right down to the lowliest brickie and machine operator have now got time to sit back, wipe their foreheads and take stock of the gigantic task they have completed so willingly and with such dedicated skill; to look around them and draw in a breath or two and congratulate themselves on what they have accomplished and the fine job they have made of it all.
The first celebratory concert took place last night in the Orlando Stadium in Soweto to enormous acclaim and the enjoyment of the huge crowd who attended. Today, Friday 11th June 2010, the first game of the World Soccer Cup was played between Bafana Bafana and Mexico (a drwan game 1-1) and from now on – no matter what the outcome may be, South Africa will become the first African nation to host this soccer spectacular, and come good or ill, this achievement will become part of our history.
Congratulations to all those who participated in bringing about the culmination of a dream and let this event bring us all together and lead us forward to become one nation united in our desire to achieve and reach the top as we have done in the past. South Africans of all races are achievers and are a credit to those fine men and woman who have done so much to make the country as it is now, as well as their sincere hopes to improve the lot of the less privileged.
Wonderful! You have done a fine job and you deserve every word of praise that will be showered on you all. Ayoba!
