South Africa World Cup 2010 Logo

Interesting to stumble across this site. I am by no means a meteorologist, but I do love the South African Weather. I was lucky enough to live there for a few years and studied a Master’s degree whilst there. I live in Oxford UK, which is fantastic for other things but the weather is not one of them! It’s overcast here now but thankfully it is not raining and nor has it for a few weeks actually.

I lived in California very briefly and in Australia for just a few months and if I have to chose I did find South Africa’s the nicest climate. That’s very subjective though and all of them are so much better than the UK that it seems like arguing like against like.

I don’t know much about the sunshine hours, but I do remember being told when in South Africa that the national average over a year is 8.5 per day. That should amount to a bit over 3100 hours per year. That is nearly, but not quite, as high as the average suggested in the post above.

The local source I dragged up was the BBC weather database and it lists at least some of the South African cities (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/weather/search/new_search.pl?search_query=south+africa&go.x=0&go.y=0). The 6 mentioned average about 8.4 hours between them year round. Having said that, I see that three of the cities mentioned are on the coast and they drag the average down considerably. If you only count the three cities in the interior the average is more than 9 hours per day. I imagine that is more representative of the nation as whole because the vast majority of South Africa is on that tall inland Plateau of 3000-6000 feet. None of the desert and semi-desert cities are being considered there at all. They BBC also lists Perth (http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/city_guides/results.shtml?tt=TT003050) but the statistics given there only average Perth out at 7.8 hours annually. Of the Australian capital cities, Darwin fares the best with 8.42 hours. Madrid does appear the sunniest in Europe, not that I have checked every European city, and averages 7.75 hours. So at least according to the BBC weather website the statistics quoted above are at least roughly accurate, if somewhat inflated.

I cannot vouch for the reliability of the BBC weather division, Lord knows it’s often wrong when it comes to rain here! However I am certainly no meteorologist, only a bored person who had an hour to waste surfing the net on a Sunday afternoon.

On a more relevant note I love South Africa and am confident that the world cup planned for 2010 will be a success. I do plan to be in the country for at least some of it, which hopefully shows that I harbour no hard feelings for our recent cricket clash. Though Australia will probably beat you guys anyway (I’d far rather New Zealand or Sri Lanka win though).

Posted from  United Kingdom

I visited South Africa recently and was amazed at how much development there is everywhere and how many new buildings and improvements are being done! Also as a European I was surprised to see how modern it already is. I had in mind a much more primitive idea. In fact it is sophisticated and has excellent infrastructure. I liked the people and was completely amazed by the country’s beauty and I wish to return again. 2010 cup might be a wonderful excuse.

Posted from  United Kingdom

It will be a shambles…half the money set aside will be creamed off by the officials, as is the norm in Africa and the whole country will be in chaos trying to host an event of this size.
There will be barely enough hotel rooms to accomodate FIFA and the World’s press, let alone the fans and crime will be rampant thanks to South Africa’s useless police sevice and non existent law and order.
I’m English by the way…and yes i have been to South Africa. Beautiful country, but that’s not enough.

Posted from  United Kingdom

I am a proud South African. But in terms of the 2010 World Cup – I think we should give it to England or Australia to host. Because we are going to mess up.
Our government is corrupt, you can bride your way out of anything here. The police are completely useless and the crime is rampant. And its not petty crime.
Our government cannot even arrange public transport and leaves it in the hands of the private sector, and thats why we have such lawlessness and carnage on our roads. Mini taxi do what they like on the roads here with no threat of the police doing a thing to them. Law abiding citizens like myself arethen just fined for speeding and talking on your cell phone. Whislt absolutley no policing takes place.
The government – even our useless weak President and minister of security say there is no crime problem. The are blinded by corruption and hatred.

Come to South Africa and even the 2010 World Cup – but be warned you will not have a good time, and some of you will never leave.

Harsh words, but unfortunately – this is the reality here.

It surprises me to hear things like the two above because I have been travelling to South Africa for years and never experienced anything vaguely like that.

I have conducted a few tours there and have found organisation there to be, generally of course, outstanding. Far better than, for instance, a lot of mad Italian bureaucracy.

I am very optimistic about it and was jubilant when I heard that South Africa won the bid. I know a lot of South Africans here in UK and I know many are very bitter and disenchanted, but I really do not understand why. Every time I have been to the country it has been fantastic. I have also conducted enough business there to know that it is efficient and bribery certainly NOT a norm. Moreover, none of my ex-pat British friends have moved back from South Africa post-apartheid and I think that says a lot. Their lifestyle is clearly better than it would be here and they wouldn’t trade it lightly. I have even toyed with the idea of moving there permanently myself and may very well do so in the next few years.

See you in 2010 at what I think will be the most exciting games so far!

Posted from  United Kingdom

Wow! It’s remarkable how pessimistic the world is! For God’s sake! Name a country in this world who hasn’t had their fair share of strife – I challenge you. America (allegedly the greatest country on Earth) wages war on the Middle East, China (the next super-power) who’s people’s living conditions are crimes against humanity, any European country – riddled with a history of war, genocide and crime. Wherever you are in the world, before you have the audacity to judge a country who has only fairly recently overcome one of the greatest injustices (Apartheid) the world has ever seen, think where your country has been. Not always a bed of roses was it…

I lived in SA for almost 30 long years and thank God for every day I now spend working and living in Western Europe.
People who visit SA on holiday have NO idea how it is to live there with constant crime, corruption, violence.
People who have to live in SA

Posted from  Liechtenstein

I shudder to think what a mess those awful people will make of such a great tournament.
Lets keep the WC in a decent Country for everyones sake.

Posted from  United Kingdom

I live several months each year in the UK and several months in South Africa because of work commitments.

Though I am British, I prefer South Africa and really think people who are worrying about the world cup are horribly misinformed about what the country is like. It’s fantastic and I am quite sure the cup will be brilliant.

I’m also not saying it lightly – I’ve been in and out of South Africa for over twenty years and hopefully will move there fully once work allows it.

Anyhow, that’s my sixpence. peace.

Posted from  United Kingdom

Nonsense, it will be a shambles!

Posted from  United Kingdom

Viva South Africa and its beautiful climate, people and scenery!
I hope all the visitors to our wonderful country encounter positive South Africans who are trying to make a constructive effort to solve some of the problems that SA faces… and not some of the whinging, pessimistic and venomous people who seem to hang around on these blogs. Like ANY country it has problems that are going to take time to solve but it’s well worth the visit! Welcome!

Posted from  United Kingdom

I think South Africa will do a great job, it’s one of my favourite countries and I am really keen for 2010! It’ll be fantastic.

Africa will continue to be the laughing stock of the World!

Posted from  United Kingdom

These foreign soccer supporters are going to come here like lambs to the slaughter! But let them. I want them to experience first hand what us South Africans have to contend with on a daily basis. Say what you like, this government is useless. It’s time people were honest enough to admit that this glorious rainbow nation is a dismal failure!

Negative comments are very valid, how Blatte could have allocated the games to the communist ruled SA is beyond me, yes lived 40 years in SA thus we know the situation, everything the comrades handle is a disaster, how else can it be if the place is run by semi educated commies & criminals & other assorted shady characters.
Reasons to make the following statement are to numerous but would advise all sportlovers to refrain from visiting this gangster paredise & follow progress from the safe comfort of your home
Would advise anyone reading this to advise their friends NOT to visit the RSA, & thereby endangering their well being also visits to SA are seen by the red government clique as approval of their policy of farm murders & the glorification of murderers of innocents

Some of the comments above obviously reflect a biased view point. There some things that should be noted. Almost everyone South Africa has either close friends or family that have been victims of violent crime. It is possible to avoid being the victim of crime here but it takes effort and an acute awareness of the situation in the country. I would not advise any foreigner to come to South Africa unless he/she has a local guide and sticks to the safer areas of the country.

If you do decide to visit during the world cup stick to your hotel. Do not go out at night to party, rather have your session at your hotel. Do not tour the cities on foot. Get a reliable local to take you around.

If you cannot arrange this stay at home and watch the progress of the tournament from a safe distance.

I find the negative comments written on this page very surprising.
Yet what is not surprising is that they are written by ex-pats who hit and run when our country went through some hard times. Yes we still have problems! which country doesn’t!? but its a time of optimism and I for one am very proud to see how far OUR country has come post 1994.

Everywhere I go there is development being done and people talking about our excellent work so far. If i remember correctly Wembley stadium,built in the heart of LONDON was completed way over schedule and budget barely in-time for the FA CUP FINAL! And this is in your NEW 1ST WORLD country.
All I’m hearing is CRIME CRIME CRIME! but pls look at the facts, do some research and see the stadia we are building. the infrastructure we have updated and our positive attitudes!

Germany’s target of revenue for Fifa was $2.8billion which the achieved at the end of their world cup. Ours is $3.2billion and we ALREADY have that.
need I say more!

Please if South Africa was not capable of hosting an excellent World Cup or is in danger of not meeting Fifa requirements they wouldn’t have awarded it to us.

I’m sorry to say some comments above are very stupid. It’s shame to hear people like Jammie and Bill talking so negetively about our ability to host a safe World Cup Tournament considering how brilliant they sound. A word of advise to thee intelectuals-NOTHING WILL CHANGE, WE WILL HOST THE 2010 TOURNAMENT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES, YOU WILL WATCH US RISE TO THE OCCASSION AND WE WON’T MISS YOU AT ALL. May God keep you safe till 2010 so as for you to witness the success of our beloved country.

Just an update on the “negative” comments. Yesterday (27th November 2007) a family was followed home after returning from church in Erasmia near Pretoria. The father and uncle were shot and are in hospital in a critical condition. The son and son-in-law were killed instantly. Did this even make front page news? No! because violent crime is not news in South Africa. It is normal.

By the way I am not an expat. I do not intend leaving South Africa. Pretending that crime in South Africa is not a pandemic and not on the scale of a genocide will not help to stop it.

Taking the world cup away from South Africa may just spur the politicians on to actually address the problem.

People, there is no country without crime,gangsters and violence!! Lets give SA a chance, it’s going to be the first country to hold a world football tournament in AFRICA. All you negative SA’S YOU SUCK.

Posted from  United Kingdom

There is no place like OUR MADIBA’S HOMELAND…..THE CRIME WE ARE ENDURING NOW CAN’T BE WORSE THAN APARTHEID…. I LOVED THIS COUNTRY WHILE I WAS IN THE WORSE OPPRESSIONS AND I LOVE IT NOW…
SOUTH AFRICA WILL HOST THIS WORLD CUP LIKE WE HOSTED OURSELVED FROM APARTHEID….
I LOVE AFRICA….
and by the way crime in this land is a product of apartheid, if anyone wants to blame someone they must go back to the PW Botha’s…

All those who have a problem with South Africa they must just stay away and shut-up… U dont hear American’s lambasting their corrupt country. Please we tired of people looking at our government as the worse thing that has ever happened to this world… We never oppressed anyone or call for any war…
How could we be worse… PLZ NOW lets move on and celebrate with Africa as they are hosting this beautiful game…
To those who are behind us … THANX we’ll remember you when we are in paradise …

i posted this @ 1:11 pm not 6:10 am as writen above…

Wounded Nation

AFTER bathing in the warm, fuzzy glow of the Mandela years, South Africans today are a deeply demoralized people. The lights are going out in homes, mines, factories and shopping malls as the national power authority, Eskom – suffering from mismanagement, lack of foresight, a failure to maintain power stations and a flight of skilled engineers to other countries – implements rolling power cuts that plunge towns and cities into daily chaos.

Major industrial projects are on hold. The only healthy enterprise now worth being involved in is the sale of small diesel generators to powerless households but even this business has run out of supplies and spare parts from China.

The currency, the rand, has entered freefall. Crime, much of it gratuitously violent, is rampant, and the national police chief faces trial for corruption and defeating the ends of justice as a result of his alleged deals with a local mafia kingpin and dealer in hard drugs.

Newly elected African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma, the state president-in-waiting, narrowly escaped being jailed for raping an HIV-positive woman last year, and faces trial later this year for soliciting and accepting bribes in connection with South Africa’s shady multi-billion-pound arms deal with British, German and French weapons manufacturers.

One local newspaper columnist suggests that Zuma has done for South Africa’s international image what Borat has done for Kazakhstan. ANC leaders in 2008 still speak in the spiritually dead jargon they learned in exile in pre-1989 Moscow, East Berlin and Sofia while promiscuously embracing capitalist icons – Mercedes 4×4s, Hugo Boss suits, Bruno Magli shoes and Louis Vuitton bags which they swing, packed with money passed to them under countless tables – as they wing their way to their houses in the south of France.

It all adds up to a hydra-headed crisis of huge proportions – a perfect storm as the Rainbow Nation slides off the end of the rainbow and descends in the direction of the massed ranks of failed African states. Eskom has warned foreign investors with millions to sink into big industrial and mining projects: we don’t want you here until at least 2013, when new power stations will be built.

In the first month of this year, the rand fell 12% against the world’s major currencies and foreign investors sold off more than £600 million worth of South African stocks, the biggest sell-off for more than seven years.

“There will be further outflows this month, because there won’t be any news that will convince investors the local growth picture is going to change for the better,” said Rudi van de Merwe, a fund manager at South Africa’s Standard Bank.

Commenting on the massive power cuts, Trevor Gaunt, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Cape Town, who warned the government eight years ago of the impending crisis, said: “The damage is huge, and now South Africa looks just like the rest of Africa. Maybe it will take 20 years to recover.”

The power cuts have hit the country’s platinum, gold, manganese and high-quality export coal mines particularly hard, with no production on some days and only 40% to 60% on others.

“The shutdown of the mining industry is an extraordinary, unprecedented event,” said Anton Eberhard, a leading energy expert and professor of business studies at the University of Cape Town. “That’s a powerful message, massively damaging to South Africa’s reputation for new investment. Our country was built on the mines.”

To examine how the country, widely hailed as Africa’s last best chance, arrived at this parlous state, the particular troubles engulfing the Scorpions (the popular name of the National Prosecuting Authority) offers a useful starting point. The elite unit, modelled on America’s FBI and operating in close co-operation with Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), is one of the big successes of post-apartheid South Africa. An independent institution, separate from the slipshod South African Police Service, the Scorpions enjoy massive public support.

The unit’s edict is to focus on people “who commit and profit from organized crime”, and it has been hugely successful in carrying out its mandate. It has pursued and pinned down thousands of high-profile and complex networks of national and international corporate and public fraudsters.

Drug kingpins, smugglers and racketeers have felt the Scorpions’ sting. A major gang that smuggle platinum, South Africa’s biggest foreign exchange earner, to a corrupt English smelting plant has been bust as the result of a huge joint operation between the SFO and the Scorpions. But the Scorpions, whose top men were trained by Scotland Yard, have been too successful for their own good.

The ANC government never anticipated the crack crime busters would take their constitutional independence seriously and investigate the top ranks of the former liberation movement itself.

The Scorpions have probed into, and successfully prosecuted, ANC MPs who falsified their parliamentary expenses. They secured a jail sentence for the ANC’s chief whip, who took bribes from the German weapons manufacturer that sold frigates and submarines to the South African Defence Force. They sent to jail for 15 years a businessman who paid hundreds of bribes to then state vice-president Jacob Zuma in connection with the arms deal. Zuma was found by the judge to have a corrupt relationship with the businessman, and now the Scorpions have charged Zuma himself with fraud, corruption, tax evasion, racketeering and defeating the ends of justice. His trial will begin in August.

The Scorpions last month charged Jackie Selebi, the national police chief, a close friend of state president Thabo Mbeki, with corruption and defeating the ends of justice. Commissioner Selebi, who infamously called a white police sergeant a “f***ing chimpanzee” when she failed to recognize him during an unannounced visit to her Pretoria station, has stepped down pending his trial.

But now both wings of the venomously divided ANC – ANC-Mbeki and ANC-Zuma – want the Scorpions crushed, ideally by June this year. The message this will send to the outside world is that South Africa’s rulers want only certain categories of crime investigated, while leaving government ministers and other politicians free to stuff their already heavily lined pockets.

No good reason for emasculating the Scorpions has been put forward. “That’s because there isn’t one,” said Peter Bruce, editor of the influential Business Day, South Africa’s equivalent of, and part-owned by, The Financial Times, in his weekly column. “The Scorpions are being killed off because they investigate too much corruption that involves ANC leaders. It is as simple and ugly as that,” he added.

The demise of the Scorpions can only exacerbate South Africa’s out-of-control crime situation, ranked for its scale and violence only behind Colombia. Everyone has friends and acquaintances who have had guns held to their heads by gangsters, who also blow up ATM machines and hijack security trucks, sawing off their roofs to get at the cash.

In the past few days my next-door neighbour, John Matshikiza, a distinguished actor who trained at the Royal Shakespeare Company and is the son of the composer of the South African musical King Kong, had been violently attacked, and friends visiting from Zimbabwe had their car stolen outside my front window in broad daylight.

My friends flew home to Zimbabwe without their car and the tinned food supplies they had bought to help withstand their country’s dire political and food crisis and 27,000% inflation.

Matshikiza, a former member of the Glasgow Citizens Theatre company, was held up by three gunmen as he drove his car into his garage late at night. He gave them his car keys, wallet, cellphone and luxury watch and begged them not to harm his partner, who was inside the house. As one gunman drove the car away, the other two beat Matshikiza unconscious with broken bottles, and now his head is so comprehensively stitched that it looks like a map of the London Underground.

These assaults were personal, but mild compared with much commonplace crime.

Last week, for example, 18-year-old Razelle Botha, who passed all her A-levels with marks of more than 90% and was about to train as a doctor, returned home with her father, Professor Willem Botha, founder of the geophysics department at the University of Pretoria, from buying pizzas for the family. Inside the house, armed gunmen confronted them. They shot Professor Botha in the leg and pumped bullets into Razelle.

One severed her spine. Now she is fighting for her life and will never walk again, and may never become a doctor. The gunmen stole a laptop computer and a camera.

Feeding the perfect storm are the two centres of ANC power in the country at the moment. On the one hand, there is the ANC in parliament, led by President Mbeki, who last Friday gave a state-of-the-nation address and apologized to the country for the power crisis.

Mbeki made only the briefest of mentions of the national Aids crisis, with more than six million people HIV-positive. He did not address the Scorpions crisis. The collapsing public hospital system, under his eccentric health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, an alcoholic who recently jumped the public queue for a liver transplant, received no attention. And the name Jacob Zuma did not pass his lips.

Last December Mbeki and Zuma stood against each other for the leadership of the ANC at the party’s five-yearly electoral congress. Mbeki, who cannot stand again as state president beyond next year’s parliamentary and presidential elections, hoped to remain the power behind the throne of a new state president of his choosing.

Zuma, a Zulu populist with some 20 children by various wives and mistresses, hoped to prove that last year’s rape case, and the trial he faces this year for corruption and other charges, were part of a plot by Mbeki to use state institutions to discredit him. Mbeki assumed that the notion of Zuma assuming next year the mantle worn by Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s first black state president would be so appalling to delegates, a deeply sad and precipitous decline, that his own re-election as ANC leader was a shoo-in.

But Mbeki completely miscalculated his own unpopularity – his perceived arrogance, failure to solve health and crime problems, his failure to deliver to the poor – and he lost. Now Zuma insists that he is the leader of the country and ANC MPs in parliament must take its orders from him, while Mbeki soldiers on until next year as state president, ordering MPs to toe his line.

Greatly understated, it is a mess. Its scale will be dramatically illustrated if South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup is withdrawn by Fifa, the world football body.

Already South African premier league football evening games are being played after midnight because power for floodlights cannot be guaranteed before that time. Justice Malala, one of the country’s top newspaper columnists, has called on Fifa to end the agony quickly.

“I don’t want South Africa to host the football World Cup because there is no culture of responsibility in this country,” he wrote in Johannesburg’s best-selling Sunday Times.

“The most outrageous behaviour and incompetence is glossed over. No-one is fired. I have had enough of this nonsense, of keeping quiet and ignoring the fact that the train is about to run us over.

“It is increasingly clear that our leaders are incapable of making a success of it. Scrap the thing and give it to Australia, Germany or whoever will spare us the ignominy of watching things fall apart here – football tourists being held up and shot, the lights going out, while our politicians tell us everything is all right.”

Saturday 9th February 2008

As a “previously advantaged” early 40’s white male in SA, I am hoping and praying that sanity will prevail in the New South Africa. We have one of the most beautiful countries in the world with fantastic potential, however the trend of most African countries to take what is fixed and break it is a reality that intelligent and educated South Africans (of all races) are beginning to realize. Previous generations have made the bed that we are now lying in and I’m afraid that the future does not look very promising. Through shear desperation, the uneducated, brainwashed, breeding masses are bound to drag us all down sooner or later. As with almost every other skilled person I know (of all colours), I just wonder when we will have to abandon ship and swim to the nearest 1st world haven of sanity. Africa is more and more becoming a pathetic continent, standing with it’s hands out begging instead of getting off their rear ends and helping themselves. How will we progress with a culture like this? What a shame, what a crying shame. God help us all. Viva SA, Viva!