It is designed as an ongoing, sometimes routine meeting between President Thabo Mbeki and his team of advisers on the one hand and the captains of industry at the other end of the financial table.

But when all the cooing and camaraderie is completed at Wednesday's get-together to contemplate the country's economy, mining magnate and Mamelodi Sundowns president Patrice Motsepe intends to throw a cat among the pigeons and exhort big businesses to support South African soccer to the hilt as preparation for hosting the 2010 World Cup gets into full swing.

Before leaving Berlin for South Africa after the completion of the World Cup, Motsepe said the vibrant, all-encompassing triumph of the recently-completed event in Germany had only emphasised the need to re-generate efforts to ensure the success of the tournament in 2010.

"We have an huge act to follow," said the Sundowns president, "and we are going to be judged accordingly. There is no time to waste and no necessary and worthwhile expense should be deemed as beyond our means in the process."

Motsepe said a major bugbear was the traditional policy of major business in South Africa pouring three times and more money into sports like rugby and cricket — even though soccer is overwhelmingly the most popular game among the vast majority of the country's population.

And the Sundowns chairperson will deliver a timely and persuasive argument in view of the urgency and importance of the 2010 World Cup to the nation as a whole at this juncture.

He says traditional "old tie" allegiances are at the root of business's selective preference for rugby and cricket — and this is surely a consideration.

But of equal consideration is that rugby and cricket have consistently been able to perform more enterprisingly and efficiently on and off the field in the firmament of international sport — and administrators of the ilk of Local Organising Committee chairperson Irvin Khoza, CEO Danny Jordaan and Motsepe will have to persuade those who hold the purse strings that they are now able to lift Bafana Bafana out of the morass in which it has descended and do what it takes to make 2010 a turning point for South African soccer.

Sapa

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