Mossel Bay focuses on South America for 2010 World Cup

“The direct, short-term impact of the 2010 FIFA World Cup on Mossel Bay will be a massive injection of capital at a time of the year when, historically, we have always experienced low visitor numbers - but the long-term impacts could be even greater.”

Legacy Projects

That's the opinion of the South African coastal town's official 2010 coordinator, Louis Harris, the man who's responsible for Mossel Bay's bid to host a national team, for the development of the infrastructure required for the event, and for the logistics surrounding it - and who has also involved himself in the creation of the so-called “Legacy Projects”, which are designed to ensure that the event will have lasting benefits for the communities it touches.

“From the outset, both FIFA and the South African government made it clear that they wanted the 2010 World Cup to have as many lasting, long-term benefits as possible, and most people interpreted this to mean that they wanted to see investment in infrastructure and football pitches,” said Harris.

Limited funds, creative thinking

“However, because Mossel Bay is a small town with limited funds available for this kind of development, we had to think creatively, and to leverage our investment in time rather than in funds to achieve our ends.

“Of course we had to put some money into developing a FIFA-standard Pitch - and this makes sense because the playing surface is always the first thing a team looks at when making a decision about where to base itself - so our municipality decided to build a completely new practice facility on our existing football fields.

“But we realised that the bidding process would bring us into contact with a wide range of people whom we might not normally have met - and so the other aspect of our Legacy Projects, the development of mutually beneficial relationships, came into being.”

The Southern Cone countries

After initially casting its net across a wide spectrum of potential qualifiers, Mossel Bay soon realised that it would make most sense to concentrate on one region of the world - and so the decision was made to focus on the Southern Cone countries of South America.

“This was an important decision because it literally changed the way we think about Mossel Bay,” said Harris.

Few Spanish speakers

“We realised that we had many assets that were underutilised, but that we were constrained by not having many people in our community who could speak Spanish.”

In fact, research showed that there were less than a handful of Spanish-speakers in the district, and, obviously, they were too few to have an impact on any potential business with the Mercosur Countries.

“We saw that we had to speak the language if we wanted to welcome the people,” he continued, “and so we approached the University of Buenos Aires, which set up a language faculty in the town, and we're now planning to have between 300 and 400 locals speaking Spanish fluently by the time a team arrives here next year.”

And, he said, that would be just the beginning.

Four-pillar strategy

“It's all about creating a South-South Strategy that stands on four pillars: (a) tourism, (b) health and social security (with sport as a vital component of both); (c) trade, and (d) cultural and scientific dialogue.

“We firmly believe that unlocking the language barrier will unlock the doors to creating friendships that will lead to mutually beneficial arrangements in all of these areas of concern - all of which stretch well beyond the limits of the game of football,” said Harris.

On the short- to medium-term benefits to the town, Harris said that Mossel Bay had been selected as the media hub for the Eden Region during the 2010 event.

“The Eden Region is made up of the districts of the Garden Route and the Little Karoo, which rate as two of the most important tourism destinations in southern Africa - and the presence of the media hub will benefit us by providing a showcase for the world's media.