“Disappointing”

African Cup of Nations (AFCON) Local Organising Committee (LOC) head, Mvuzo Mbebe, told reporters yesterday that Cape Town had not been selected as a host city for the upcoming AFCON because it “did not meet the criteria for hosting,” but did not elaborate quite where the Mother City fell short.

You have to know that the optimal number of host cities is five and Cape Town came out number six. Number one was eThekwini followed by Nelson Mandela Bay, then Rustenburg and Mbombela, in that order. There is no bad blood that saw Cape Town ruled out, as we just followed the criteria for all the cities,

Mbebe said during a press session at Soccer City in Gauteng.

Last month, the five host cities for the AFCON were finally announced by Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula, who named Johannesburg, Rustenburg, Nelspruit, Port Elizabeth and Durban, with Johannesburg’s Soccer City stadium, last seen hosting the FIFA World Cup openers and closers in 2010, playing the same main role in this upcoming tournament.

Cape Town Mayor, Patricia De Lille expressed the City’s disappointment that it was not nominated to host, but highlighted the serious concerns the municipality had aired about the hosting agreement the LOC had produced, concerns which were never directly addressed by the LOC. She also indicated that other municipalities had shared Cape Town’s concerns.

In a statement, De Lille said,

From the outset, the City expressed its desire to be part of what we truly believe is a celebration of African football, however, at each stage of the process, we have highlighted a number of serious legal, financial and other concerns that needed to be negotiated in order for the City to comply with our legal responsibilities, and to ensure that we did not compromise the interests of the ratepayers and citizens of Cape Town.

The main issue raised by Cape Town was the high costs of hosting the competition that the City was expected to shoulder, anything from R27 million to an expected R40 million, with unclear messages from Government as to how much support host cities could expect.

Minister Mbalula was ambivalent on the issue of costs, saying the exact financials had yet to be finalised with host cities, and that the Government would approach AFCON with a view to loosening some of the more stringent conditions on the host cities.

Understand that this is not a ‘spaza shop’, we still have to sit down and look at overall costs. We have stopped the LOC from running to the cities. Now all issues will be forwarded to the centre (task team). If Johannesburg, for instance, has a problem, we will account to that,

Mbalula told reporters. He also indicated that “private companies” would “come in” to provide financial and logistical support.

AFCON 2013 will kick off in Johannesburg in January next year.

[Sources: News 24, Blogspot, Paragon, News 24]