|
Johannesburg – THE victorious World Cup Soccer Bid Committee returned home to a hero’s welcome yesterday.
Cheerful Soweto residents sang and danced as an open-deck bus carrying the members drove through the streets of the huge township.
The group returned to South Africa around 9am from Zurich, Switzerland, where they successfully bid to host the prestigious soccer tournament in 2010.
They arrived on flight SA 2010, its number changed from the usual SA 275 by SA Airways management in honour of the successful bid.
Before their trip around Soweto, the committee, led by chairman Irvin Khoza and chief executive Danny Jordaan, toured Alexandra township, north of the city.
Later, thousands of Soweto residents rushed into the streets as sirens of a motorcade leading the bus signalled the bid committee members were approaching.
The bus drove through White City, Mofolo Park and the Maponya Shopping Complex.
Minutes after Port Elizabeth’s Mr Jordaan alighted from the bus, a crowd of young boys hugged him as he walked to the Hector Peterson Memorial in Orlando. Others carried placards reading “Viva World Cup 2010” and waved the South African flag.
The celebratory tour ended at the monument after members of the delegation observed a minute’s silence in honour of schoolboy Peterson, who was shot dead by the police in 1976 as thousands of schoolchildren protested against apartheid.
Looking optimistically into the future, Mr Jordaan said South Africans would be proud if Bafana Bafana could win the cup in 2010. “If we win, it will make our country proud.
“The future is bright and they (the youth) must build on it,” Mr Jordaan said.
He revealed he would fly out of the country early next week to attend a congress of Fifa, the world football governing body, in Paris on Wednesday.
After the Fifa congress, he would attend a meeting hosted by the Germans for the 2006 Soccer World Cup to be held in that country.
Several Cabinet ministers, politician-turned-businessman Tokyo Sexwale, former Ghanaian soccer star Abedi Pele, Sundowns boss Patrice Motsepe, SA Football Association president Molefi Oliphant, and Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa were on board the bus.
Mr Shilowa said the SA 2010 Bid Committee members would parade in all nine provinces once they had rested.
“This was (us) just arriving and announcing that we are back. This is not the roadshow to the people – you still need to do it,” he told fellow bid committee members.
“You must go to all the provinces so that they too can celebrate with you.”
Meanwhile, the SA Communist Party said it saluted President Thabo Mbeki, former president Nelson Mandela, Mr Jordaan and Mr Khoza for the country’s victory.
“This is a wonderful achievement for our country and continent,” the SACP said.
Giant soft drinks firm CocaCola also congratulated the committee.
“Danny and his Bid team have worked tirelessly to realise a dream that began nearly a decade ago.
“Let the vuvuzela (soccer horn) blow loudly!” the firm said in a statement.
It promised to support the committee to ensure that the 2010 World Cup would be a memorable one.
A huge hero’s welcome is planned for Port Elizabeth’s Danny Jordaan, who successfully led the 2010 Soccer World Cup bid, when he arrives at the PE airport this afternoon.
Local residents have been encouraged to give him a “fitting” welcome and bring their flags and “vuvuzelas” (horns) to the airport, where he will arrive at 3.40pm.
Praise poured in for the “PE Boy”, with many saying he had made the metro proud. An exhausted Mr Jordaan will jet in with his wife Roxanne, who was with him in Zurich.
She told a weekend newspaper that she would like to put him in a Jacuzzi and let him greet his two dogs.
His daughter, Luana, 21, a Rhodes journalism student, said her father was very excited about winning the bid but sounded “very tired”.
She could not get hold of him on the phone to congratulate him on Saturday because he was busy “non-stop” with media interviews. “Everyone wants a piece of him,” she said after speaking to him yesterday. Mr Jordaan, 53, also has a son, Michail.
|
|
