While it’s true that big stars, fancy football, nice stadiums, and loud fans are some of the key ingredients in making a nice World Cup – all of those would be irrelevant if it’s not for proper security. Therefore the popular saying for the South African Police Service (SAPS) is that “You can never be too prepared”.

World Cup 2010 Safe?

While it’s hardly the first time South Africa hosts a tournament, which already 150 major sporting events under its belt, none have come close to the magnitude and importance of the FIFA World Cup. But according to SAPS spokesman Vishnu Naidoo, the local police has been hard at work making sure everything is prepared and planned for.

“We are working tirelessly to ensure this is one of the best tournaments that FIFA has hosted. We want people to come and enjoy themselves, secure in the knowledge that we will do the policing”

South Africa has hosted the FIFA Confederations Cup and the Indian Premier League in recent years but still the SAPS is investing heavily to make sure that no shortcuts are taken. The SAPS have invested both in equipment: six helicopters, ten mobile command vehicles, 100 high performance vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, body armour and water cannons as well as 55,000 new police officers over the past several years and 41,000 extra officers with sport tournament policing experience.

This years African Cup of Nations ended up in tragedy with the shooting of several members of the Togo team – but South Africa believes that it’s strategy of high visibility of police officers will prevent any crime.

Tactical response teams, simulation exercises, years of training, databases of likely disruptors are among some of the other precautions that South Africa’s SAPS has taken ahead of the 2010 World Cup. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.