Speech by Premier of the Western Cape Mr Ebrahim Rasool during the 90 Minutes for Madiba Welcome Dinner, Cape Town

I had to come tonight because the Mayor of Cape Town Helen Zille had invited me. She invited us, for a wonderful dinner for music and for those who do, for some wine. Now this is a very important and significant invitation because the mayor does not like dinners and food and wine and all of those things. She uses tax payers' money for other things, so when she invited me I said I have to see this, and that is why I am here.

So Helen, thank you very much for breaking your own policies and we look for these kinds of contradictions when we come to different parties. But I knew that something significant must be happening to make her change her mind like that, but who can refuse to party when Nelson Mandela is going to be 89 tomorrow? I think that is enough reason to break her policies.

I want to say that this is going to be a wonderful way in which Cape Town and the Western Cape and hopefully all South Africa will tomorrow say happy birthday Madiba. May you have many more and may you enjoy the rest that you deserve. I must say, Cape Town is often not seen as a soccer city by the way in which we sometimes don not fill the stands.

I am told that the ticket sales are already at just under 30 000 and that was by this afternoon. I want to say that we it must be significant because we have wonderful people here. We have Jack Warner, vice president of Federation International Football Association (Fifa), Jerome Champagne, Danny Jordan and many other officials from Fifa. This is also an occasion, for Cape Town, South Africa and Africa to say to them thank you very much for making sure that there is at last an African world cup looming in 2010.

We had to fight hard for it but its happening and we are going to make it the most stunning success of all world cups and so that is a promise that we are making. Mr Warner, thank you very much for your faith in Cape Town, in South Africa and the African continent and we are hoping that this is the first of many.

I also want to say, particularly to Jerome Champaign, at a time when we did not believe in ourselves, in Cape Town, you believed in us. You said Cape Town must stay in the World Cup together with Sep Batter must stay in the world cup for as long as possible. Today a brilliant, beautiful sometimes disputed stadium is coming out of the ground. Danny Jordan and I met the people who really want the world cup here and there are thousands of them and the polls are saying that 70% of Capetonians want the stadiums, want the world cup here and we are just forward and tomorrow night we will prove that all of you are right, and thank you very much for your faith in us.

And then if Madiba is not enough and if Jack Warner is not enough, Pele must be sufficient reason for a mayor to change her policies. How can we refuse to give a party if Pele is in town? This is a legend that we often were not able to see because our past, and here we see him as handsome as ever, as humble as ever, but we are hoping to see whether he plays as well tomorrow.

So Pele, welcome to Cape Town thank you very much for being here. We have got Pele, George Wier, Samuel Eto, I mean has his fan club here in Cape Town, did you see outside there? Now that something stunning we thought that they were waiting for the mayor, but no, for Samuel. So I think this is a significant night when all of us come down to earth because there are bigger people than us in the world.

Then there are the South Africans, Lucas Radebe, Philemon Masinga and Mark Fish. Now I think that this is where we are going to see our best people playing tomorrow. That is all I wanted to say. If this is what World Cup 2010 can be like, then roll on 2010. And Madam Mayor if between your party and my party we can agree that you can still be mayor by 2010, you must agree that I must also be a premier by 2010.

Thank you very much.

Issued by: Office of the Premier, Western Cape Provincial Government
17 July 2007