With the tournament starting tomorrow many South Africans are divided on what the benefits of holding of the event will be, writes EMMET MALONESoccer Correspondent in Johannesburg

THE VERY first Gautrain departed on Tuesday from Oliver Tambo airport for the exclusive white Johannesburg suburb of Sandton a few months late, well over-budget and with the odd ticketing problem still to be ironed out.

With the World Cup starting this week, it was all a rather close run thing but those who paid around €10 each to cut a commute of anything up two hours down to just 14 minutes declared themselves well pleased and, as transport minister Sbu Ndebele put it: “There were quite serious problems in heaven – in the beginning.”

The €2.4 billion high-speed rail link’s opening is of symbolic as well as practical significance both to organisers of the World Cup and the country’s political leadership as it is regarded as one of the competition’s “legacy” projects.

The concerns, however, of those who live and work in Sandton, where visiting Fifa dignitaries will be housed over the coming weeks, some in a building where the ice is made from Perrier and the asking price for an apartment with full five-star hotel-like service is anything up to €4,000 a night, are a million miles from most of the South African population, many of whom are sceptical from afar about whether they will see any benefits from the fleeting visit of the global “football family”.

Amongst residents of the townships around Cape Town yesterday there was certainly some division regarding the return that will be earned by the people on their government’s investment – which could yet hit €5 billion when the dust settles – in hosting the event. Everywhere, there was enthusiasm for the football and support for the national team, Bafana Bafana, but less confidence in some quarters that so much money is being well spent.

“I won’t lie to you,” says Patricia Mtibane, a resident of Langa, a township that is home to some 150,000 on the outskirts of the city, “the World Cup has given nothing to the people here.”

Mtibane starts work at six each morning when she goes to a local abattoir to buy sheep’s heads which she then cooks over an open fire on the side of the road before selling them on for around €3.50 each. Often she stays there until 11pm and on a good day she can sell 20 heads, each of which, she says, feeds six people.

Business, she insists, is down because unemployment is rising with the jobs created by construction and services related to the World Cup not enough to compensate for those lost as a result of the impact here of the global financial downturn.

“We don’t ask that they should have given the money to us just that they help the people to do their business because we need them to work so that we can sell our goods. But the World Cup has just turned things upside down. The businesses are still going bankrupt.”

A few hundred metres away, Pam Gwayi, is only slightly less critical of the situation. “I think it (the World Cup) has given something to those people who have got work from it,” says the 23-year-old who arrived in Langa from the East Cape countryside in order to get a better education 15 years ago and has lived for most of the time since with her family, and two others, in a room barely 10 feet by six.

“I do know some people who have got work because of the building that has been done and the construction work is well paid, but when the stadiums are built the people will be unemployed again. When it is over I think most people in the townships will not have received any benefit at all.”

A few miles away is Khayelitsha, a township founded just 23 years ago which is now home to more than one million people, a small number of whom live in much coveted Niall Mellon-built homes. There, Vicky Ntozini insists that those in some sectors are feeling the benefits of the investment already and argues that others will too given time.

“A lot depends on what you were doing before,” observes Ntozini, who has built up her bed and breakfast business in the heart of the township from two rooms to six over the past 12 years but who still had to farm most of the 27 American soccer supporters who wanted to stay with her on Tuesday night out to neighbouring businesses because she did not have room for them all. “This,” she says with evident pride, “is payback time, because it’s not so quiet now. They (the tourists) are not coming here for the luxuries,” she says, “they are coming for the experience and we are offering something different.”

As for those who feel the money spent on the tournament has been wasted, she argues that they need to be patient. “People are complaining now but in future years we will see the benefits as word is spread by the people who came of how beautiful South Africa is.”

Thandisile Qabazi, a Langa resident and community activist who makes a living guiding visitors around the townships agrees. Like many of the shops and restaurants in Cape Town’s city centre and Waterfront area, the company he works for has started to see business pick up in recent days and he is optimistic about the impact the tournament can have, not just in the coming weeks but also well beyond that.

He is at pains, however, to point out that the event will not serve as any sort of magic wand for a government that has faced criticism over the slow pace of social and economic progress made since the end of the apartheid regime more that a decade and a half ago.

“Some of the people have benefited from the huge projects that have accompanied the World Cup. And they will still be happy with their vuvuzelas while the tournament is going on. But,” he suggests, “the real question is what happens after July 11th (the date of the final) in a country that does not have a social system that deals with unemployment.”

In the longer term, he maintains, the cost will be viewed as having been justified. “One of the key questions in South Africa,” he says, “has been how to unify the people and sport has shown that it can bring different races together. Also, there is the infrastructure which can be a legacy, not just for South Africa but for the whole continent.”

In the meantime, the matter of who benefits sooner rather than later was still being busily hammered out this week amid the countless last minute preparations for the tournament kick-off.

The three main mobile phone network operators announced at the start of the week that they will donate 70,000 phones between them to the police services, a move the police minister, Nathi Mthethwa described as a “major resource boost” to the tournament in the week it will get under way; despite it being somewhat unclear whether the phones can really be properly distributed at this late stage.

Mthethwa, meanwhile, has been criticised by representatives of the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) for failing to instruct the police to refrain from arresting prostitutes during a tournament which, the organisation claims, will bring much business but many additional risks to the sector.

The country’s taxi drivers, meanwhile, have finally signed up to a deal aimed at bringing uniform and affordable prices to longer distance journeys during the event but the South African Trade Union Congress (Cosatu) is far from sure whether its call for all businesses to close early tomorrow so that workers can watch the opening game, between South Africa and Mexico, will be heeded.

Major accountancy firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, have said they will be closing at lunchtime and corporate law firm Bowman Gilfillan has said that it will not only finish up before the kick-off but also host staff events at which workers can watch the game together.

The commute home from Sandton then, might start a little early tomorrow. The fear is, however, that for many less well off workers, as well as those who have no employment at all, it will be very much business as usual between tomorrow and mid July.