World Cup watchSouth African World Cup preparations called into question after 15 injured in stampede

Published 7 June 2010

Worries about personal safety deterred soccer fans from going to South Africa, and only 223,000 of them have decided to brave the trip (the organizers of the 2010 World Cup hoped that about 1.2 to 1.5 million would come); stuck with hundreds of thousands of unsold tickets, FIFA distributed them for free to local fans to avoid the embarrassment of teams playing in empty stadiums; to save money on printing the free tickets, FIFA distributed Xerox copies of tickets — somehow missing the fact that this made it easy for fans to photocopy their own extra tickets; the first result was a stampede in a friendly, pre-tournament game; organizers are now worried about what will happen when the tournament begins this Friday

We have had many security-related stories leading up the start of the 2010 FIFA World Cup later this week in South Africa, and likely will have many more before the event is over on 11 July. With five days to go before the games officially kick-off this Friday, attendees and officials are already questioning the event’s security preparations after fifteen people were injured on Sunday in what is being described as “a chaotic stampede” during a practice match between Nigeria and North Korea.

The Globe and Mail’s Geoffrey York writes that the fifteen people injured on Sunday in a chaotic stampede at a World Cup tune-up match between Nigeria and North Korea, sparking worries about organizational fiascos in the final days before the global soccer tournament.

Among the injured was a South African police officer who was seriously wounded and taken to hospital. The other victims were fans who were trampled in the stampede, although their injuries were minor, according to a police spokesman. The man with the bandaged head was eventually taken away in an ambulance.

The stampede was triggered when thousands of fans tried to enter Makhulong Stadium, a 12,000-capacity venue with cement bleachers in Tembisa, an impoverished township near Johannesburg. Entrance was supposed to be limited, but thousands of free tickets had been distributed and the fans angrily demanded to be allowed in. Police tried to block the main entrance gate, but the fans knocked open the gate, trampling each other and the police.

It’s unbelievable that nobody died,” said Yan Boechat, a Brazilian magazine journalist who witnessed the moment when the stampede began. “They came in waves. I’ve never seen anything like it in Brazil.”

One of the injured fans, Princess Mbali, said she was at the bottom of the heap of trampled fans. “I thought I was dying,” she told the AP.

York notes that, bizarrely, there were thousands of empty seats in the stadium, even as the police were struggling to prevent thousands of soccer fans from entering.

It was unclear why the police was trying to restrict entrance to the stadium. One report suggested that Nigerian officials — in charge of organizing the match — had wanted to limit attendance to just 5,000 people so they could save money on security guards. Others suggested that the police was blocking thousands of angry fans because they had arrived late.

After the police was overwhelmed by the fans, scores of reinforcements soon arrived, including many in riot gear, with helmets and shields, and others carrying guns. There was no explanation about why they were not present earlier.

At one point, the soccer match was suspended for about ten minutes as police pushed back fans from one section of the field.

Just hours before the match, South African President Jacob Zuma had proclaimed that the country was “more than ready” to host the World Cup. He also declared that the World Cup had “already begun.”

York writes that the chaos in Tembisa suggested that the organizers are not yet ready. The problems at the stadium entrance were completely predictable, but nobody took charge of the situation — not anyone from Zuma’s authorities, nor anyone from FIFA, the governing body for world soccer.

After the stampede, FIFA struggled to distance itself from the chaos at the match. “This friendly match has no relation whatsoever with the operational organization of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, for which we remain fully confident,” FIFA said in a statement.

The FIFA Web site, however, leaves a very different impression. It listed the match on its calendar of World Cup events, and it referred to the match as “a 2010 World Cup South Africa tune-up match.”

Just ten days ago there was similar chaos at the entrance to Soccer City, the massive 95,000-seat stadium where the opening match of the World Cup will be held this Friday. In that match, thousands of fans pushed and shoved in disorganized mobs at the entrance of Soccer City, knocking over fences and elbowing each other at the turnstiles. Once they entered the stadium, there was no crowd control and anyone could sit in any seat. “It was a miracle that nobody was injured at that match, and it should have warned the authorities that they needed to improve the security arrangements at the tune-up matches,” York writes.

The problems at the match on Sunday were predictable because Nigeria has a huge following in Johannesburg, where many thousands of Nigerian migrants live. Another problem was the distribution of cheap, photocopied tickets for the match, which made it easy for fans to photocopy their own extra tickets.

Lt. Col. Eugene Opperman, a spokesman for the South African police, promised an investigation to find out why the stampede happened.