The first soccer World Cup ever to be held in an African country will start in about 3 weeks. Massive construction has taken place for years now and those initial skeptical voices as to whether South Africa could build the needed infrastructure in time for the global event have calmed down a little.

But what about the less wealthy South Africans? Do they benefit from the Cup? Do they care about it at all as daily life has some bigger issues than soccer?

To increase understanding from any corner of the world on how life tastes in less wealthy South Africa, we asked the people themselves. Most South Africans, from rich to poor, certainly do care about the World Cup now more than ever before because they are proud their home country is hosting it. While national soccer has been much more relevant, the World Cup is now a sign of hope for economic benefits and South Africans are as soccer crazy as many other nations are.

When we asked our Sibesonke community months before the Cup - less wealthy, mostly black young people - what is the biggest social issue, the topics to choose from included social problems of such a massive scale, that they would be very hard to grasp for many Westerners. In our last blog, we showed how safe people feel and how much they trust in the local police. We haven't yet covered education or health challenges. For example, South Africa has the highest HIV penetration globally. All those social issues were on the list. And with such an impressive list of social issues to choose from, World Cup 2010 got still most votes. 37% believe the short term soccer tournament is a bigger (positive) issue than second ranked crime (22%).

General education came in third with 19% from over 2000 respondents. By the way, all schools will be closed during World Cup. This is exceptional because the tournament is scheduled for South African winter time. So, soccer wins over education even with governmental approval now.

The optimism is so high that it is not rational. The South African  Bafana Bafana team would not be part of the World Cup tournament if South Africa wasn't the hosting country this year. Still, more than two thirds (69%) answer the question 

"Which team will win the WorldCup2010?" with South Africa, before Brazil, Italy, Spain and also Germany. (No, I am not offended :-)

 Just for fun we also did a score prediction by our users for a local soccer cup - the Nedbank Cup. As you can see, the results were rather difficult to predict with 3 out of 4 games ending in a penalty shootout.

Will our users predict more accurately for matches at World Cup 2010?