Durban to host 100-days to World Cup party

Durban - The City of Durban will host the official 100 Days Celebration event before the 2010 Fifa World Cup kick off in June.

The celebration will take place on 2 March 2010.

The announcement was made by Danny Jordaan, Chairman of the Local Organising Committee (LOC) during a media briefing at Durban’s Moses Mabhida Stadium on Friday.

KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Corporate Governance and Traditional Affairs Nomusa Dube said the City of Durban and the Province would pull out all the stops to ensure the success of the event.

“It’s all systems go for the 100 days celebration event.

“We are a South Africa’s sporting Mecca and the event will be an opportunity to show our readiness to host the World Cup,” said Dube.

EThekwini Mayor Obed Mlaba also promised delegates “the best celebration event”.

“We might do this in conjunction with the official opening of the Moses Mabhida Stadium, but it will be over ambitious of us to say what we are going to do during this event. The hosting of the event by our City was only announced today, so we are still to sit down and discuss the details,” said Mlaba.

The Mayor said all the details of the 100-Day celebration event would be unveiled to everyone at the right time.

Jordaan said the celebration would include a variety of activities.

“We have come to Durban to put this proposal to the Mayor and he has agreed to host the event. We all know that Durban is more than capable of holding big events and this City has a good track record of organizing successful events,” he said.

Jordaan added that there were 343 million tickets and of these, 50 percent had been sold. He also promised that the stadiums would be full during the World Cup and that the ticket prices were in line with the previous World Cups.