Posted in News on Sep 28, 2003.
Meanwhile, South African officials got down to putting the final touches to their bid book hand over after arriving in Zurich Monday, polishing their 30-minute presentation one day ahead of the official ceremony in Switzerland.
Cabinet ministers Essop Pahad and Ngconde Balfour, plus South Africa 2010 Bid Company chairman Khoza and chief executive officer Danny Jordaan, spent much of the day rehearsing their speeches and fine tuning the detail of their presentation.
Included was a dry run at Fifa's auditorium on Monday afternoon, where they will hand over the bid book on Tuesday to Blatter.
The presentation will kick-off with a recorded message from South African president Thabo Mbeki, followed by an introduction by Pahad, the Minister in the Presidency.
Jordaan is to deliver the bulk of the 30-minute plea for South Africa to be given the right to host the World Cup. He has divided his talk into 'two halves', using the football metaphor to first highlight the country's capacity to organise the World Cup in 2010 and then, in the 'second half', showcase the country's commercial capacity and infra structure.
The bid book, which details every aspect of South Africa's 2010 plans, is made up of 1,000 pages and has an additional four annexures with government guarantees and commercial contracts.
Each bidding country has exactly 30 minutes to present, with South Africa leading off at 13h00 (South African time). They will be followed by Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and Nigeria.
All presentations will be open to the other candidate countries and also the media. It is not expected that any of the 24 executive committee members, save for Blatter, will attend. FIFA's executive committee decides the host nation for the 2010 World Cup finals when they meet in Paris next May.
