Security at World Cup 2010

South Africa is known for its large numbers of (mainly white) mercenaries. South Africa appears to be one of the "big three" in terms of suppliers of mercenaries to Iraq, along with America and Britain.

South Africa is also hosting the World Cup in 2010. Some worries exist due to South Africa's crime rates.

With the United States likely withdrawing the majority of its 150,000 (ish) troops from Iraq before 2010, it's assumed that level of Private Military Company (PMC) involvement will drop proportional to the level of withdrawal of Coalition forces (although Jeremy Scahill has argued the opposite - that the US could just withdraw its soldiers and replace them with more mercenaries). Therefore its likely that there will be a bunch of unemployed South African mercenaries during the time of the World Cup. Some see this as a problem, while some see this as an opportunity!

With some "retooling", South African "mercenaries" working in hotspots like Iraq and Afghanistan could be used to provide security at the World Cup in 2010.

I say it's a win-win situation - employ the mercs so they aren't causing trouble, and achieve a temporary fix to the crime problem so that the World Cup can go off smoothly.

The only potential problem that I see is that alot of these guys supposedly worked for the apartheid regime - there could be a bad reaction to the hiring of these guys by non-white South Africans. Also, apparently there is a 1998 law against hiring mercenaries by the state - but that could probably be worked around by hiring them as temporary law enforcement officers instead.