Fan surge sounds World Cup security alarm

TEMBISA, South Africa – The World Cup games haven’t even started yet and here was a scene that everyone has feared: helicopters in the sky and ambulances – their sirens wailing – trapped in clogged alleys while a small line of riot police held back the remaining mob on a garbage-strewn street.

Less than a week remains before the first game of the World Cup, and on Sunday evening in this township northeast of Johannesburg there was an illusion that safety could no longer be guaranteed.

Most disturbing was that this was 2½ hours after a frustrated mass of mostly Nigerian fans angry at not being allowed into tiny Makhulong Stadium for a friendly match between Nigeria and North Korea surged against a giant locked gate next to the players’ entrance injuring 15. By then, a game of soccer had been played, the fans who were inside had left and the players had showered and boarded their buses.

	Police try to stop fans from entering Makhulong Stadium. (Frank Augstein/AP Photo)

Yet only then was the police mobile-command vehicle van arriving, trying to inch its way through the knot of cars that filled the only road through the neighborhoods to the stadium. The police vehicle’s siren screamed. Its horn boomed. And nobody moved. With fans and cars filling the street, there was nowhere to go. Finally, the police van’s driver opened the door and jumped out. He waved his hands frantically. Move. Move. The line of cars slowly inched to the side. The siren screeched again. The cars slid a bit more until at last a path had been cleared. The van finally crawled to the next tangle of traffic a few feet away.

For months South Africa has assured the world it will have a safe World Cup. This despite the fact the country has one of the highest crime rates on the planet and violence in and around Johannesburg is such a concern that people live behind giant gates and walls topped with electric wiring. There has long been a feeling that South Africa – isolated at the bottom of the world – has no idea what is about to descend upon it.

On Sunday evening, the guarantee of security looked flimsy.

Granted, the game was a friendly match, one not officially sanctioned by FIFA. And a source with the police from the Ekurhuleni municipality that handled the match quickly dismissed the facility as ”not a FIFA-quality stadium.”

What took place on Sunday, the source said: ”Won’t happen at an official FIFA-sanctioned game.”

But while the game was not overseen by FIFA, it was still played between two FIFA teams in the run-up to FIFA’s signature event on the soil of FIFA’s hand-picked host country. The police are essentially the same ones who will be guarding the World Cup matches. And if after seven years of preparation no one was ready to handle a few thousand fans at a friendly match in a poor township where the tickets were free, how will they be able to handle a riot from soccer hooligans or a huge protest from one of the many striking public agencies here? Let alone a terrorist threat.

Speculation on Sunday evening focused on the Nigerian consulate. The country’s officials may have handed out more tickets than the stadium (which holds about 12,000) could handle. Nobody could be sure. One witness, Charles Ledwaba, said an announcement was made on a local radio station that free tickets would be handed out at nearby police stations between 7 and 11 a.m. Lewaba, who picked up one of the tickets, said the fans who surged toward the stadium had not gotten their own tickets and yet were demanding to be allowed in because the match was advertised as free.

The fans were also not at the main gate but a secondary entrance which is used more for players, officials and media. When police told the fans to go around to the front, a walk several blocks through a neighborhood that would take at least 20 minutes, the fans balked and pushed forward. At first, witnesses said, no one could tell that people had been hurt. But then they saw blood pouring down victims’ faces. Soon after, ushers and some police tended to the injured.

Such scenes are not new to international soccer, and many are far worse such as Ivory Coast’s stadium tragedy that left 22 dead and 130 injured before a World Cup qualifier last year. Nobody died outside Makhulong Stadium, but on a test run for security just days before the World Cup it’s something that shouldn’t have happened. Especially in a city that knows too well the dangers of crowds at soccer games. In April of 2001, more than 40 people were killed in a soccer stampede at Johannesburg’s Ellis Park Stadium, which is one of the World Cup venues.

Two years later, a commission studying the disaster released a report with 14 reasons for why it happened. The top five were: poor estimates of attendance, failure to learn from past lessons, an inability to identify who was responsible for handing out tickets, the absence of a police command center and an ill-timed declaration that the match was sold out.

Now eight years following that report, with the world at South Africa’s doorstep and the country ready to show its revival, you have to wonder:

Did anybody learn anything?