Speaker: Lesley de Reuck, 2010 Director of Operations, City of Cape Town Having followed a broad and open consultory process, the FIFA By Law had been published in the Government Gazette at the beginning of February, reported de Reuck.

Having followed a broad and open consultory process, the FIFA By Law had been published in the Government Gazette at the beginning of February, reported de Reuck. He added that the City of Cape Town had spent many months in close negotiation with FIFA to ensure that the By Law – an agreement signed by all host cities – would impact as little as possible on local businesses. The By Law would be in effect for a two-week period both before and after the Final Draw (taking place in Cape Town on 4 December) and during the competition for a period of two weeks immediately prior to the first match and following the final match.

Taking the audience through the basic conditions of the By Law (a copy of which can be downloaded from the opening page of 2010 Central City Partners Forum), de Reuck drew attention to a number of points.

The first of these dealt with “Exclusion Zones”. Explained de Reuck: “Everyone constantly asks about what this is and it’s an area in which you would not be able to advertise or conduct business other than what would have been approved for that event on the day. The Exclusion Zone around the Green Point Stadium goes up to the curb of Somerset Road and ends before the businesses. It was part of a huge fight with FIFA to say if we were to extend that further it would have meant that all those businesses down the line we would have had to somehow close up their business names and so forth. But as it stands at the moment FIFA does not have a problem with the businesses along this stretch. As long as someone doesn’t go now and lease his stoep to Nike for €400 000 for the event!”

The City of Cape Town together with local law enforcement were already working to put teams in place to deal with the Rights Protection Programme and in particular how to police and enforce it during the 2010 event. De Reuck emphasized that ambush marketing, in particular, would be strictly controlled: “It’s a protected event for which sponsors pay huge amounts of money and you actually can’t do ambush marketing anywhere in the country, but we will be policing in the close vicinity and the exclusion zone. We’ll be patrolling outside stadiums enforcing ‘Controlled Area’ restrictions, and we’ll identify and confiscate counterfeit merchandise. The public viewing areas – for example, the Fan Park on the Grand Parade – are also areas that we will have to police.”

Emphasizing the seriousness with which FIFA dealt with the Rights Protection Programme, de Reuck said: “FIFA has registered almost every way that you can think of using ‘World Soccer Cup’ or ‘2010’ or a soccer ball. The first South African company they took to court was a lollipop manufacturer because the paper over the lollipop looked like a soccer ball and had ‘2010’ printed on it. The manufacturers were taken to court and lost their case.”

In order to enforce the By Law there would, for example, be special courts set up in all host cities and running 24 hours to deal with infractions during the event.

The By Law also extended to Controlled Access Sites, which would include:

• Green Point Stadium;
• Anywhere where there is an officially declared FIFA event;
• Official training sites;
• Team hotels
• The official hotels for the FIFA delegation
• FIFA fan parks; and
• Any other area designated as a Controlled Access Site. De Reuck elaborated: “For example, we’ve got public viewing areas which will probably be declared a controlled access site.”

De Reuck also requested that Capetonians begin to refer to the stretch between the Fan Park at the Grand Parade and the Green Point Stadium as the “Fan Walk”. It has previously been referred to as the “Fan Mile” Explained De Reuck: “We are now calling it the Fan Walk, because if you call it the Fan Mile, there’s a FIFA connotation to it and then FIFA clamps down on what you can or can’t do in this area.”

The City of Cape Town had also engaged in long discussions with the FIFA legal team about City Beautification, reported de Reuck, particularly around construction during the event: “In the first draft of the By Law, FIFA wanted us to stop all building in the city during that period. Obviously that’s not going to happen. They also asked us to enforce that major construction sites are beautified. Now we’ve softened that in saying that the City will go to businesses and ask and advise them to do it.”

Turning his attention to Street Trading, de Reuck noted: “There’s a whole section in the By Law on General Conduct, what you can and cannot do. We’ll be going out shortly with a public participation process during which we’ll be talking to informal traders about how this will work – how you can or can’t trade during the event. We’ll also be doing an audit on what’s being traded at the moment. We know a lot of people have stalls selling caps with names such as ‘Nike’, for example. In certain areas, we’re going to have to ask these people to not trade in a competitor’s cap or clothing. And of course, no one under the age of 16 will be allowed to trade.”

In conclusion, de Reuck noted: “The process we followed in regard to the By Law included an entire public private participation. We received a huge number of comments from many companies and businesses – including Cape Town Partnership CTP and the V&A Waterfront – and I would say 98% of those comments could be accommodated in some way or another.”

Download a copy of the 2010 Bylaw

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