The World Cup: Scoring against racism

The road to the first football World Cup in Africa has been long for host South Africa, filled with frustrations and challenges. For the country's 45 million people, it is widely seen as an important step in nation building after years of oppression and inequality, the Voice of America reported.

Six years ago, South Africa won its bid to become the first African nation to host a football World Cup, the VOA's Scott Bobb said in his report.

"The 2010 World Cup will be organised in South Africa," said the head of football's governing body, FIFA's Sepp Blatter, at the time he made the announcement in Zurich.

The country's first post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela, campaigned hard for the prestigious tournament because he saw it as a way to further reconciliation after decades of racial separation and conflict.

The head of the South African Organizing Committee, Danny Jordaan, a former football player and anti-apartheid activist, was there from the start.

"After 1990, when Mandela walked out of that prison, we saw it as a beginning of the creation of a new South Africa," Jordaan said. "After the elections of 1994, we then had to deal with building a new democratic, non-sexist South Africa."


Jordaan and other officials met during the 1994 World Cup in the United States and decided to bid on hosting the next available World Cup, in 2006.

South Africa lost this first bid to Germany by one vote, but Jordaan says that only strengthened the team's resolve.