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Ever since South Africa was awarded host city status for the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup, the country has been readying itself.Enhancements to infrastructure – whether it be roads or laying the tracks for the Gautrain, or improving our information and communication technology and telecommunications, or increasing our security levels – have made it far better than it was four years ago.
Our hospitality and tourism industry has fine-tuned its services and products to cater for all our guests. Our citizens have opened their homes and holiday abodes to soccer fans just so that they can enjoy a truly South African experience.
In situations such as organising and preparing for a monumental event such as the SWC, teething problems are natural. And despite the scepticism from both South African and international media, we have accomplished what came across as being the impossible. And as South Africans, we are proud of that.
All that is left now is for the people of South Africa to come together and absorb the tangible energy that is reverberating throughout the Rainbow Nation.
As a nation, we truly have much riding on this event, even more so for our sustained economic prosperity. And at this stage, it is up to every one of us to realise we are ambassadors of our country, who should wear our patriotism proudly on our breast.
South Africa is a brand. We want our guests to walk away from South Africa with a different idea of what the country is really about. We want them to have wonderful memories of our beautiful nation and the people who make it what it is. We want them to come back for more. We want them to see that South Africa is not only a place to visit and explore, but also a land filled with ample investment opportunities.
And, once our guests return home, they will remember what we are made of, and what we can offer each other through partnerships and business deals that will strengthen our ties in international communities.
We now have a great opportunity to be acknowledged as a first-world country – not as an emerging first-world – as perceived by so many beyond our borders.
Tracee Harvard
