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Soccer City Ready to Host the World.

2010-03-05

(Image: The calabash-shaped main stadium of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, was declared ready and officially handed over to the City of Johannesburg on Wednesday. Click on the image to view the entrance).

Roger Jardine, CEO of the Aveng Group, handed the stadium over to the Executive Mayor of Johannesburg, Amos Masondo to the sound of vuvuzelas and Shosholoza.

“Like an African calabash that securely stores food and drink, this calabash-inspired stadium will securely hold almost 90 000 fans who will witness the opening game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup,” said Jardine.

The stadium was built on the historically important site of the former FNB stadium where Bafana Bafana qualified for their first soccer World Cup, and was the site of a mass rally to celebrate the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990.

The new stadium took almost 10 million hours to construct. It is the largest stadium in Africa and one of the biggest ever built for any football World Cup event. The opening and final matches of the 2010 World Cup will be hosted at Soccer City.

According to Jardine, the stadium was designed to ensure that not a single spectator sits more than 105 meters from the pitch. The stadium also houses 193 suites, almost 2 700 media seats and 280 seats for paraplegic spectators.

Marked black seats inside the stadium form lines pointing in the directions of the other South African stadia where World Cup matches will be played, with one line pointing to Berlin’s Olympiastadion where the final match of the 2006 World Cup was played.

The seats are coloured to represent the city of gold and an African sunrise, and the tunnels to the pitch resemble mining tunnels, which are a reminder of the city’s history.

On receiving the stadium, Johannesburg Executive Mayor Amos Masondo said that on handover to the construction companies in January 2007 he stated that the City of Joburg’s vision for the project was that the community must benefit and jobs must be created.

Masondo announced yesterday that more than 17 000 jobs were created, with over 800 community members receiving formal training and accredited certification in skills such as brick laying, crane operation, surveying or computers.

“What we said would happen, has now become a reality,” said Masondo.

One of the workers who formed part of the Soccer City construction team is Thembi Maduma. She has been working at Soccer City as a cleaner for almost nine months. “It’s a privilege, and I’m proud to have had this opportunity,” said Maduma.

The price tag on the stadium construction is approximately R3,2 billion, R1 billion more than original estimates.

According to city officials, every cent can be justified and accounted for, while everything possible was done to keep costs from further escalation.