The tender process for the building of five major stadiums for the 2010 World Cup is expected to be completed before the end of this year and the host cities will announce the winning contracts, deputy Finance Minister Jabu Moleketi said this week.

He said after negotiations about the finer details with the winning bidders, building was likely to start in February 2007. He noted that preparatory work had been done at the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg, the Durban stadium, the Greenpoint stadium, the Nelson Mandela stadium in Port Elizabeth and at the stadium in Polokwane.

He expressed confidence that the stadiums would be completed in the appointed time and noted that he would prefer to avoid court action being taken in Greenpoint in Cape Town - where there is some civic opposition to the project.

"On Greenpoint there is quite clearly a number of interests that we need to navigate to ensure that at the end of the day, we are able to build a multi-purpose facility that will not just be a venue for 2010."

He hoped that people would be able to see a "bigger benefit" beyond some of the concerns that had been raised about the Cape Town project. Deputy Police Commissioner Andre Pruiss said that there would be 192,000 police members nation-wide by 2010 and some 30,000 would be devoting their attention entirely to the World Cup. They would focus on the security of the host cities "specifically", he said but they would also be involved in airport and port security.

He said that the police would be provided with command vehicles with cameras. "I can sit in Pretoria and see what is going on at a stadium," he said. "We are going to have a fleet of 40 helicopters," he said.

Pruis said that the host cities had been divided into various sectors. A geographical information system was being put in place to identify stadiums, accommodation in a given area and places "where events will take place" during the World Cup in each of the sectors.

Each host city would have two fan theme parks, the government announced, where screens would be provided and areas for selling of Cup related goods would take place. Moleketi noted that only about three million people would be able to attend matches at the stadiums while the millions of other people would need to be accommodated elsewhere.

He said it would be encouraged that South Africa's neighbouring states - such as Mozambique - would provide hub accommodation areas for competing states, such as the Brazil team and supporters in Maputo. This was a way of drawing African neighbouring states into the World Cup project.

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