WHEN South Africa won the right to stage the 2010 football World Cup — the first country in Africa to do so — there was national rejoicing. The country had placed such importance on winning that Nelson Mandela and a raft of ministers were sent to Geneva to lobby Fifa, the game’s world governing body.

Now, however, serious doubts are emerging about the country’s readiness and ability to stage the event.

“I am terribly worried,” said Donald Lee, the opposition Democratic Alliance’s spokesman on sport. “I don’t think the government yet understands what it takes.”

Polls show that one-third of South Africans do not believe their country will be ready.

Power blackouts have recently hit all the big cities and the country’s telecommunications have been revealed as grossly inadequate. The new mayor of Cape Town, Helen Zille, has now put on hold the building of a showpiece 68,000-seat stadium demanded by Fifa.

The stakes could hardly be higher. Sepp Blatter won election as Fifa president thanks to his promise to give Africa a World Cup and the loss of face South Africa would suffer if the event had to go elsewhere would do incalculable damage to the African National Congress (ANC) government.

Fifa demands that all host cities sign contracts guaranteeing dedicated traffic lanes for its officials and players, the cessation of all building work throughout the tournament, free office space, telephone, internet and communications equipment and large-scale infrastructure works including back-up power grids — not just to keep the lights on in stadiums but to ensure that street lights, traffic lights and hotel lifts are fully functioning. Currently no South African city can promise this.

South Africa’s infrastructure is decaying. In Johannesburg street and traffic lights do not work in large areas of the city, weeds grow in the road and routine maintenance has all but ceased. Public transport is virtually nonexistent and the roads are quite unable to cope with traffic volumes.

Recent blackouts in the Cape resulted in huge jams as traffic lights failed and saw hundreds trapped in office lifts, billions lost in agriculture and industry and horrific sewage spills that have made the water dangerous to drink.

Despite steeply rising demand, not a single power station has been built since the ANC came to power in 1994.

“This was an entirely foreseeable crisis,”, said Andrew Kenny, an independent power consultant. “Year by year, government watched demand rise sharply and did nothing. It ignored all warnings.”

Fani Zulu, a spokesman for Eskom, the state electricity company, said there was no need to panic. The company was fast-tracking ways to produce substantial extra capacity by 2010, he said.

But many analysts dismiss this as wholly inadequate. “It takes seven to eight years to build a big new station from scratch,” said Kenny. “Nothing started now will be ready by 2010.”

Sentech, the state company that handles the broadcasting distribution network, has declared that its equipment is antiquated. “We are not ready,” said a spokesman, warning that the country “will suffer a severe loss of reputation if it fails to deliver on its obligations to Fifa”.

Sentech’s chief executive, Sebiletso Mokone-Matabane, said there could be chaos if the transmission system breaks down, as she fears it could.

A spokesman for Fifa said it was “totally confident” that 2010 would be “a tremendous success”. Fifa draws its confidence from the fact that South Africa successfully hosted the 1995 rugby World Cup — but that was a far smaller event and the country could then rely on the infrastructure that white South Africa had bequeathed.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Fish and chip shops ‘selling cobbler as cod’
• T in the Park festival at Kinross
• How to get Madonna’s Thighs