Expert Blogs

So it is here. It's unbelievable really, given the rocky road South Africa has traveled over the decades.

But the world's biggest sporting spectacle is about to commence and the reality of the impending spectacle has now truly set in.

South Africa has had six years to prepare for the 2010 FIFA World Cup and despite all skepticism looks set to host a top class event. The field for the World Cup is of the highest order, even if a mounting list of injuries is serving to rob the event of some of its star names, and the tickets almost all sold.

All the predictions of doom and gloom, the Afro-pessimism and general wariness are all now replaced by the anticipation of any impending party.

It is huge marketing opportunity for a country mired in bad publicity because of a high crime rate and massive societal distortions. World Cup fever is palpable across all social and economic classes and the tournament will bring home the positives to a country with much to offer the visitor, as its booming tourism sector already suggests.

Internally, it offers South Africans a chance to forge a better national identity. It remains a divided nation, kept apart by the strictures of Apartheid in the past and still largely disconnected these days by economic and social choice.

The contrast of extreme wealth on one hand and abject poverty on the other remain to be solved. But for a few weeks at least there is a oneness.

Racial and ethnic tension always lurks ominous in the air, an unspoken prospect in the background. Now as everyone drives around with flags flying from their cars, it is being blown away in fevered World Cup breeze.

Events like this can prove almost revolutionary, remarkable that a social movement can come from the trivial pursuit of chasing a round, leather ball.

Of course the World Cup will be no instant cure or the country's ills but more than most countries South Africa can do with a fillip.

The mood is galvanized by the arrival of all the top names in world football and, even more important, an unexpected upturn in the fortune of the national team, Bafana Bafana.

Last Saturday they produced one of their best performances in years to outrun and outfox a well-drilled Danish team. The superior fitness and preparation of the South Africans shone through in the perfect pick me up just six days before the start of the World Cup.

Winning over Mexico in the opening game of the tournament would turn the country on its collective head, surely then unable to function for the next weeks as it celebrated with gusto.

But there is also now a growing burden of expectation, which comes from the much-improved form of Bafana Bafana.

No longer would the populace be happy with just a handful of points, the ambition now is to at least secure a place in the knockout phase. Whether that is feasible, remains to be seen.

Mark Gleeson lives in Cape Town and is a world-renowned authority on African soccer, having spent the last 25 years writing about the sport. He was honoured for his services to the game on the continent with a Merit Award from the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in 2008. He has won numerous journalism awards in his native South Africa, where he currently also works for satellite TV station SuperSport as a match commentator. He also writes extensively on both South African and African soccer.