Preparing for any eventuality
Craig Urquhart
20 March 2008The 2010 Fifa World Cup hosts have experienced an interesting week on the security front. A Pretoria University academic raised more than a few eyebrows when he suggested that Muslims were a potential threat to the World Cup.
Professor Hussein Suleiman, who is the director of the University of Pretoria's Centre for International Political Studies, claimed that South African Muslims were funding Islamic terrorists.
Local Muslim leaders have dismissed the claims as "wild, distorted, Islamaphobic and unsubstantiated," but South Africa, like so many countries around the world, has experienced urban terrorism.
Concerns that previous World Cup hosts, like Germany or Japan and South Korea, would fall prey to acts of terror fizzled out largely due to the formidable security operations which were in place.
With this in mind, it was reassuring to see the hive of activity in the skies above the construction site of Cape Town's World Cup stadium this week.
During the three-day aerial security exercises, some of the most elite and well-trained members of the security forces simulated various scenarios and enacted emergency contingency plans in order to "neutralise" any form of aerial threat. This included dealing with a simulated a mid-air hijacking. Similar exercises will be staged in other host cities over the next year.
"We all united as a nation to hope and pray that South Africa would win this bid and now, as the event rapidly approaches, we must stand firmly behind those responsible for organising, hosting and securing the event," said police spokesman Sally De Beer.
Over the next few months, some of the top military experts, including the FBI, border control officials and anti-hooliganism experts, will be helping South Africa ensure that the quadrennial showpiece of international football will be staged with military precision.
It's all the world expects of us.
Urquhart is a former Fifa World Cup media officer and the current editor of Project 2010
