A live radio broadcast conducted jointly by the British Broadcasting Co-operation’s Radio programme World Have Your Say and SAFM to over 150 countries around the globe, was transmitted out of the Kaizer Chiefs Village in Naturena on Tuesday evening.

The programme which lasted around two hours, co-hosted by the BBC’s Ross Atkins and SAFM’s Xolani Gwala was conducted in front of a live studio audience at The Amakhosi’s headquarters.

The audience was made up of a number of young boys and girl’s teams from around Johannesburg, and also included current and former Kaizer Chiefs players, staff members, as well as Amakhosi fans, regular listeners to SAFM and the World Have Your Say programme and a number of specially invited guests.

World Listening

The World Have Your Say programme is one of the most tuned into of the BBC’s radio programmes and boasts a number of regular listeners from all around the globe. The programme has in the past done live broadcasts from a number of African countries such as Uganda and Kenya.

Fiona Crack a producer of the show, which has been doing a live, broadcast each day this past week from different locations around South Africa, bought into the idea of conducting a live show from Naturena more than a year ago as she divulges. “In 2006 when I was in South Africa I drove past the Chiefs Village and at that time I thought that it would be the perfect setting to do a live radio broadcast from around the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and when the opportunity presented itself we requested Chiefs to allow us to do the show from Naturena and they were only to obliging”.

Healthy debate

The discussions on Tuesday’s programme centered around South Africa’s preparedness to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup as well as the impact the FIFA World Cup will have on the country, in put was given by various role players from with in the South African soccer industry, with current Chiefs and former Bafana Bafana striker Shaun Bartlett and his former international team mate Lucas Radebe featuring prominently in the discussions.

Foreign listeners to the show were also invited to be part of the discussions and were able to e-mail in their questions and suggestions, as crack added the response drawn from the global audience on the issue was what they needed for an open debate.

“We have some regular listeners from around the world apart from just them we had a healthy flow of comments coming in from Iraq, UK, India, USA, countries around Europe and host of African countries too. The idea of these kinds of discussions is to get a wide range of public opinion on the topic being debated, and we achieved just that on Tuesday”.