Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu took South Africa's plea to host the 2010 World Cup Soccer championships to Trinidad today, with Mandela saying it may be his last trip abroad...
News Source: news.com.au
"This may be my last trip abroad," he said. Later Jack Warner, a Trinidadian who is vice president of soccer's international governing body FIFA, said Mandela had come to the Caribbean country against advice from his doctors.
Neither Warner nor Mandela gave details of his condition.
After serving 27 years in prison for his fight against racism, Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and later became South Africa's president in 1994 during the country's first all-race elections. He now heads a children's foundation that helps AIDS orphans.
He and fellow Nobel laureate Tutu, who also has continued to campaign against racism and apartheid despite two bouts of cancer, were in Trinidad primarily to lobby for their country's bid to hold the World Cup.
South Africa is one of four African nations competing to hold the soccer event, after losing the 2006 finals bid to Germany by just one vote.
"Apartheid was perhaps the easier part of the struggle. Now the tough part begins, to fight in order to make every one of our people enjoy the fruits of freedom," Tutu said while delivering Mass to more than 1000 people this morning at the Anglican Holy Trinity Cathedral.
"You can help us if you can make these people who decide the soccer venue - tell them there is no other country really but South Africa to be the host of the World Soccer Cup," said Tutu, 72.
South Africa, which was banned from international sporting events for decades during apartheid, has hosted soccer's African Cup and the rugby and cricket World Cups. But the country has lost some of its darling status since Mandela handed over the presidency to Thabo Mbeki in 1999.
Representatives from Egypt, Tunisia and Libya will make similar pleas to soccer officials this weekend at the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, or CONCACAF's annual conference on the nearby island of Grenada.
Mandela arrived yesterday, and met today with Prime Minister Patrick Manning before the children's rally and then a luncheon, where he apologised for being too weak to climb stairs to a podium and address a crowd of about 500.
"I just think Mandela is the greatest!" said Ida Daniels, an elderly member of the congregation at Holy Trinity Cathedral.
Even before Mandela and Tutu's arrived separately yesterday, Trinidad's own history of racism and colonialism forced soccer officials to change today's luncheon venue from the Trinidad Country Club - which decades ago refused entry to blacks - to a chain hotel.
Before Trinidad gained independence from Britain in 1962, unspoken practices of barring blacks from cricket clubs and other organisations was common.
Today, Trinidad's population of 1.3 million is almost evenly divided between black descendants of slaves and Indo-Trinidadians whose ancestors came from India to work the sugar plantations.
"Somehow, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth, that this apostle of racial equality, conqueror of South Africa's apartheid system, who spent nearly 30 years in prison ... should be asked to sit at a table in a building associated with some of the evils that prosecuted him," Caribbean journalist George John opined in a Trinidad Express editorial this week.
South Africa is counting on Mandela's celebrity status to win the World Cup bid.
Compared to its other African competitors, South Africa has more temperate climate to host the soccer event, but Morocco is offering sweeter business possibilities to World Cup sponsors because of its relative proximity to Europe.
The decision is expected to be announced on May 15.
Original Story: Published May 1 2004
