Cape Town catalyst - Cape Town, South Africa's bid to become site of 2004 Olympics

Architectural Review, The, March, 1995 by Barbara-Ann Campbell

Cape Town's ambitious yet far-sighted bid to host the Olympics in 2004 - which have never been held on African soil - aims to channel the huge commercial and political impetus of the Games into a comprehensive redevelopment of some of the city's most marginalised areas.

Africa as a continent has never hosted the Olympic Games. Yet how better could the international community show its support for both the continent and the new South Africa than by placing the world's most prestigious sporting event on once divided soil: a badly needed boost to economy and morale, epitomising Olympic ideals of world peace. Sam Ramsamy, President of the National Olympic Committee, realised that South Africa was a strong contender for the 2004 Games. Cape Town entrepreneur, Raymond Ackerman, and community spokesman, Ngconde Balfour were thinking along the same lines.

A formal competition was launched between South Africa's three largest cities: Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. Cape Town City Council gathered a committee of community, sporting and business representatives. A feasibility study proved it was viable to host the Games and a formal bid, co-chaired by Ackerman and Balfour, was launched. Of 40 professional submissions, the team led by Ove Arup Incorporated was selected and given the go ahead in September 1992. Competition was fierce and the stakes high. Both Johannesburg and Durban had gone for a municipal initiative with associated metropolitan financing. Cape Town argued that at this transitional stage in South Africa's affairs, with so many financial calls on the public purse, the use of public sector money could not be justified. Their bid was the only one to be entirely private-sector led and funded. Fifteen months and a new government later, Cape Town won national support.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) increasingly resembles a prosperous multi-national corporation of billion dollar turnover and associated vulnerabilities. Television syndicates and trade alliances wield enormous influence over choice of venue. But President Samaranch of the IOC is countering this image: he wants to use the unrivalled political and commercial power of the Olympics in an interventionist way before he leaves office in 1997. Two post-war examples in particular, record political and economic impact out of all proportion to two weeks of track and field events: Tokyo in 1960 and Seoul in 1988. In South Africa, the potential of the Olympic opportunity can be maximised by tying the next 10 years of preparations into the Mandela government's critical Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). The Arup team understood these multiple objectives and wove them together.

The urgent demand for housing, infrastructure and social amenities are priorities in the new South Africa. The RDP is a comprehensive programme which links industrial development and economic growth to providing jobs and essential services where they are most needed. Of parallel importance is economic empowerment and the involvement of newly emerging professionals and contractors in the delivery process.

Arup SA has experience in this field. The Stutterheim Forum, where Arup was involved in providing services and infrastructure for 1000 residential sites and a school, brought together community leaders, businesses and the local authority to create joint plans for this small town in a rural environment. Arup managed this collaborative participation, ensuring the maximum of local contracting and labour-intensive methods of construction, while developing training schemes as part of the project.

Cape Town has made an irresistible bid. Table Mountain is as iconic as the Sydney Opera House. Empty sandy beaches sweep as flaxen lawns below the stretches of fynbos and wild flowers forming one of six world-protected floral kingdoms. Yet future developments could threaten these fragile eco-systems. Eco-tourism, or travel-with-a-purpose, is the global growth sector. With this in mind the Cape Town 2004 Olympic Bid Committee is committed to an environmental charter.

Cape Town has a culturally diverse history and a liberal political tradition. It has sustained a context of relative peace and stability contrasting with the violence that has affected so much of South Africa. Lying in the second most economically powerful province, with three universities (plus a sports medicine faculty) and two technikons (technical colleges), it has a strong education and training structure in place. The metropolitan region comprises two zones of historical affluence and development - one running north-south down the peninsula, the other running east-west from the Central Business District (CBD). Between these some two million people - increasing rapidly as a result of inward immigration - live in relative poverty on the Cape Flats, many in informal settlements. To achieve their developmental objectives, the Games had to be planned to bring benefits to these areas. They had to be African and community based, addressing income redistribution and empowerment and capitalising on existing initiatives. They had to be feasible.