While South Africa has good reason to be optimistic about its ability to host the 2010 Fifa World Cup, doubts still linger in the minds of the international media, says International Marketing Council of SA (IMC) chief executive Yvonne Johnston.
"Old stereotypes die hard," Johnston told hundreds of newspaper editors from around the world at the World Association of Newspapers conference in Cape Town this week.
Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the IMC, Johnston answered the doubters by saying that South Africans had established an unbeatable track record for "fixing what others have written off as terminally broken, and for finding solutions where others have despaired."
Not many outside observers believed South Africans would come together the way they did in 1994, Johnston noted - some had even predicted a bloodbath; but South Africans in their millions turned out to vote in the country's first democratic elections, and apartheid passed away peacefully.
