Pariahs turn glitterati

Driving in Jo'burg is war by other means, although sometimes it does feature the traditional shooting. Mostly, though, we go nowhere slowly. Often we move less than the length of a car in more time than it would take the same car to inch from the beginning to the end of the assembly line of its birth.

Cape Town doesn't fare much faster or better, but at least there are views of the ocean and Table Mountain to destress the traffic-tormented.

Up on the Highveld, all we have to distract us during the daily ordeal are other frustrated drivers and passengers, the odd crash, metro cops sniffing out potential bribe targets under the guise of enforcing the law, the smash-and-grabbers those cops should be targeting, and - increasingly - fences of plastic orange netting and abominably situated construction sites.

The last two tend to raise our ire more than most. They're the newest kids on the block, and they're temporary and a sign of better things to come. So we live with them much as an accident victim lives with a plaster cast.

The orange netting comes with the territory that is being dug up to lay the cables, which will, we hope, revolutionise the communications infrastructure in a country that has a clumsy, elitist and expensive relationship with the internet. The hard-hat areas most often indicate places that will one day (soon, please) be anointed with gleaming portals to the Gautrain, a rapid rail system.

For these promised amenities, the like of which are unheard of in Africa, we have to thank the imminent arrival of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

And to think there are still people out there who reckon sport and the real world shouldn't mix. Some South Africans who should know better are among them. Then again, we've never been able to keep up with our own history. Take the sports boycott, for instance. Isolation from international sport was never going to knock apartheid out, but it was a stinging jab in the monster's face until it finally swayed onto the ropes. Then, one shining November day in 1991 as change swept the country, came the unthinkable news: South Africa were going to play three one-day internationals in India.

The tour was a product of historic loyalty and circumstance. India, the first country to cut diplomatic ties with South Africa after whites voted the National Party into power in 1948, had been a staunch supporter of the sports boycott. The Indians were also a driving force behind South Africa's re-admittance to international cricket in June, 1991. So, in November that year Ali Bacher, the chief executive of the nascent United Cricket Board, led a delegation on a goodwill visit to the subcontinent. While the suits were there, Pakistan cancelled an imminent tour to India. The Indian administrators, spearheaded by Jagmohan Dalmiya, pressed the South Africans to step into the breach.

"We stopped over in Nairobi on the way back," Bacher told Cricinfo. "I was sharing a room with [future ICC president] Percy Sonn, who said he thought we would be rushing into things if we accepted the Indian offer. From Nairobi I called Steve Tshwete [who would become democratic South Africa's first sports minister]. He said, 'Put Percy on the phone.'"

Sonn duly changed his mind, but the immaturity of South African cricket's racial unity was evident at the meetings that followed. According to Bacher, "the white board members said we were moving too fast, the black board members said we should go to India".

As someone who represented the old South Africa, endured the boycott, was central to the rebel era, and became a key figure in the unity process and the new dawn that followed, Bacher has lived through interesting times. "I captained a very powerful Test team, and then we were isolated. But South Africans are resilient; they don't give up. Sport could have been wiped out in this country, but it survived. Ultimately, credit must go to the African National Congress. Long before democracy was guaranteed, they understood the power of sport to bring people together."

Bacher chose an unusual measure of the progress South African society has made since those heady days: "It's a credit to South African cricket and the people of the country that we haven't heard a murmur about Makhaya Ntini being dropped for the current one-day series against Australia."

Another yardstick that could be used to determine how far South Africa has come is its all but hitch-free hosting of events like the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the 1996 African Cup of Nations football tournament, the 2003 Cricket World Cup, the inaugural World Twenty20 last year, and even the current World Cup qualifiers. So much so that the country seems to have become the default stand-by venue of choice for major tournaments. Hence the forthcoming attractions of the IPL and the ICC Champions Trophy, both of them moved from Asia.

South Africans may be more jaded now that the afterglow of 1991 has faded, but there's a sense of pride in the fact that powerful people in control of massive budgets trust us to do things properly. Of course, some of that money is flowing into the coffers of a nation which is quickly learning that the real winners in sport are the entrepreneurs and impresarios.

Conversely, a volunteer culture has also taken root. Established to bolster the staff who ran the 2003 Cricket World Cup, the initiative has been carried through to next year's football World Cup. In a sign of the times, many of the 2010 volunteers are from other African countries.

As the magical year approaches, stadiums the like of which world has never seen are muscling their way into cityscapes all over our country, and all those building sites and orange-netting fences must count for something.

And yet, hardly a week passes without doubts being cast from that place some people call the First World about South Africa's preparedness to stage the greatest football show on earth. Strange how, when an event is due to take place in Europe, the United States or Australia, nary a bleat is heard about readiness. "We must not become too agitated by that question," Danny Jordaan, the chief executive of the 2010 FIFA World Cup organising committee, told Cricinfo. "But people in other countries do need to know that since 1994 South Africa has hosted 146 different international events of all shapes and sizes and across all kinds of sports codes, and we have done so successfully. This year we have the British and Irish Lions rugby tour coming up as well as the Confederations Cup in football.

"It happens on such a regular basis nowadays that we hardly think about it as something special, but we should. In fact, name the countries to have hosted the World Cup in rugby, cricket and soccer, and you will struggle." The only answer is England, and since South Africa's ascendance to democracy in 1994, no country has landed that trifecta. "That will be our track record. We will stand alone in that regard," Jordaan said.

At last look, the IPL's transplant to South Africa was proceeding apace. Neither airlines, hotels nor the cricket industry seemed flustered by the prospect of the gathering storm of glitz, glamour and glorious cricket.

Perhaps change is what we're really good at down here on the southern tip of this ancient continent. A few decades ago, for instance, it was unlawful for South Africans of Indian extraction to be in the Free State after sunset. Now Bollywood is about to light up the night in Bloemfontein. As they might say in those parts, "Bliksem!" That's the Afrikaans word for lightning, as well as being a mild epithet.

Guaranteed, you'll hear much worse when the normally frenetic streets of Jo'burg ooze to a standstill.