Who is going to mess up 2010 for us?

With 350 000 visitors to this country for the finals and about 45 billion TV viewers, surely it would be churlish of any South African not to make the most of all this attention that is going to be focussed on us?

But, there are some interesting questions that need to be asked. Firstly will 2010 really benefit all South Africans? And if most will benefit, who are the people who are going to mess it up for us?

Restaurant rip-offs

Will it be ACSA with their still pathetic service at our airports? Will it be our Immigration Department and their passport control people who tend to do the oddest things at the oddest times, like kick really well known people out of the country just because they don't have the required number of pages in their passports?

Will it be our hotel and restaurant owners who will see 2010 as a cash cow and jack up their prices to ridiculous levels rather than provide a service at a fair price in order to entice more visitors back in years to come?

Will it be SAA continuing with their dog-in-the-manger attitude of blocking charter flights and competitor airlines from laying on extra flights?

Will it be our politicians making suicidal statements about everything from HIV/Aids to how well Mugabe is running Zimbabwe?

Selfish criminals

Will it be our crime industry who in their usual selfish way, will just see 2010 as an opportunity to ply their trade among foreign tourists instead of us locals? Or will it be our media, who will look for every little hiccough and sensationalise it? Can or should our media be making an exception here? Is it possible to keep being a watchdog while at the same time being very selective about biting absolutely anyone who strays off the straight and narrow?

The big question of course is... should all South Africans be getting together and deciding to make this 2010 thing really work or should we just treat it as just any old event and bitch, moan and nitpick?

But, if we will all benefit by pulling together and making the most of what a lot of people are calling this once in a lifetime opportunity, how on earth are we going to get this message across?

Which is best? To go the Sydney Olympics route where Australians all got together and throughout the organisation phase kept insisting that everything was absolutely hunky dory? Or do we go the Athens Olympics route and all pull in different directions and whinge and moan to make everything look like it is chaos and never going to be ready on time and when the crunch comes only to find out it was well organised anyway?