South Africa Ready to Deal With World Cup Hooligans

May 10th, 2010 | by: Daryl | Comments Off

There’s been a lot of worry about security at World Cup 2010, with FIFA and the South African organizers repeatedly vowing to protect visiting fans from the crimier elements of South African society. Which is fair enough. But it’s interesting how the emergence of that potential problem has taken everyone’s mind off the usual World Cup security worry: Hooligans. Nasty nasty hooligans.

Before every World Cup the big concern has been the behaviour of certain people (I’m not calling them fans) who travel looking for trouble. The focus is usually on the English, but other countries have idiots too. And South Africa is getting ready to deal with them.

First priority for South African national police commissioner General Bheki Cele is preventing the hooligans from entering South Africa:

“We have met the intelligence chiefs of Britain – I didn’t know that there were countries that had a football police, but we have met the football police – and they are giving us information on those fans they won’t let leave their countries (due to prior convictions),” Cele said at a pre-tournament media briefing in Durban on Sunday.

“We know there are some that have already moved out of their countries and there are trying to (travel overland through) Africa to come here.

“We have talked to all chiefs of police in southern Africa who are blocking them there.”

For those that do enter, Cele and his people have set up special cells and an expedited judicial system.

“For those fans that are here, we will have special courts, we will have special cells … if they do anything out of hand, we will put them in the special cells and try them and give them a life sentence if it is serious and let them go home if they are innocent,” he said.

I can’t decide if that’s reassuring or a potential nightmare for innocent fans who accidentally find themselves in the middle of trouble and then in the middle of one of these “special cells” and then with a life sentence in South Africa. Let’s hope it’s the former and not the latter.

The one small consolation for would-be hooligans who don’t manage to get to South Africa is that they can stay home and play video games instead:


(before you get to wondering… no, that’s not real)