Johannesburg — The South African government and soccer chiefs have ordered a full judicial enquiry to investigate and establish how and why 43 people were killed in a stampede at a football match in Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg on Wednesday night.
President Thabo Mbeki announced in Pretoria that the investigating commission would be headed by Judge Bernard Ngoepe, adding that the matter would be addressed urgently. "We are with you at this moment of grief" Mbeki told the bereaved and the injured.
In Johannesburg, after meetings Thursday morning with leading national soccer and government officials at the start of investigations, the Sports' Minister, Ncgonde Balfour, headed a press conference flanked by members of the South African Football Association (SAFA) and the Premier Soccer League (PSL) which organised the match on Wednesday.
Also present were executives from Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs, the two hugely popular rival clubs at whose key league match the fatal stampede occurred.
Stunned silence, shock, grief and deep public sorrow turned to anger, questions and recrimination at what appeared to be flawed security at Ellis Park stadium for the Chief-Pirates derby. Allegations that the tragedy was the result of too many tickets being sold for the match-up, and desperate fans outside forcing their way into the stadium, were denied by an official statement read at the news conference by Molefi Oliphant, the president of the South African Football Association..
The official statement confirmed that 43 people lost their lives in the crush. Another 160 were injured, 89 of whom were admitted to hospital after the giant floodlit park was itself transformed into a mobile emergency casualty ward on Wednesday night.
Oliphant said the stadium had a capacity of 60,000 and confirmed that at least another 15,000 spectators had gathered outside Ellis Park, but rejected claims that the match had been oversold. The practice of selling most of the tickets at the stadium on the day of the match has been criticised, with increasing calls to encourage a culture of South African soccer fans purchasing their tickets before the event, to prevent a crush on the day and avoid disasters such as Wednesday's fatal pile-up.
The Orlando Pirates-Kaizer Chiefs match was tied 1-1 before being abandoned after 34 minutes. Oliphant said they had agreed to postpone all Premier Soccer League soccer matches scheduled in South Africa this weekend.
The former president, Nelson Mandela, urged that sport should continue its tradition of uniting South Africa and called for national solidarity after the Ellis Park stampede tragedy. In remarks aired on the South African Broadcasting Corporation, SABC, Mandela said "One of the things we must immediately grasp is that, when there are disasters of this nature, the nation is called upon to stand together and all thinking men and women must now rally around those who have lost their beloved and forget about blaming one another".
There have been ugly accusations and counter accusations about who should take responsibility for the stampede -- the police and security personnel, football officials, stadium executives or frustrated fans who forced their way into Ellis Park among others.
At the Johannesburg news conference, Robin Petersen, the Chief Executive Officer of the Premier Soccer League, said the judicial enquiry would solve many questions, including the one about access to the stadium by emergency vehicles and ambulances which had difficulty entering the stadium on Wednesday night. He followed this with a long and impassioned call for understanding.
"Clearly we all have our own ideas, we all feel as strongly as you do and we all are touched - in fact more so than you are -- because we are the ones affected by this in a very direct way. Together with the families, we have committed to working with the judicial enquiry to ensure the full facts. We had our plans and were confident, based on our previous experiences, that those plans were adequate. Quite clearly something went wrong. It is not for us, at this point, to be able to determine what exactly did go wrong. We would ask for your patience that we go through the proper due process, where all the evidence can be heard; that it does not come from one or two or three people who might speculate or have their own particular insight, but that together with due process and the proper procedures, we can ascertain exactly what did go wrong".
The PSL boss concluded " we are not saying that nothing went wrong. We are saying that we need to do a proper process to understand what went wrong and quite clearly to make sure that this never ever happens again".
Nelson Mandela appealed for calm with his comments: "It is extremely important, if we respect those who have passed away, for us to contribute to an environment of calm and peace and to show that we are a nation that can handle disasters of this nature without aggravating them." In another statement the former South African leader said "the incident should not divide us now, but rather bring us even closer to ensure that this horror story does not repeat itself."
A special fund, with an initial contribution of R600.000 rands (equiv $75.000USD) has been set up for survivors of the stampede and bereaved relatives. South Africa's Premier Soccer League, as well as the two top rival soccer clubs, Pirates and Chiefs have each given R200.000 rands (approx $25.000 dollars). Thousands more South African rands have been donated by the private sector.
A missing persons' hotline has also been set up.
The Sports' Minister, Ngconde Balfour, said he hoped the judicial enquiry would present a comprehensive report that would soon get to the bottom of the Ellis Park Stadium tragedy.
Meanwhile, certain South Africans and foreigners are speculating about the country's chances of hosting the 2010 World Cup soccer championship after the events of Wednesday night.
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Balfour and others have been quick to speak up, saying that the priority now are the bereaved and the survivors, but the tragedy should not affect South Africa's chances of possibly staging the world's most prestigious soccer event. "People should look at this incident from a global point of view," said the minister. "These kinds of things have happened in other parts of the world as well. Of course we have to make sure that we minimise this kind of incident, but definitely this should not affect our chances of hosting the World Cup in 2010".
Last year, South Africa narrowly lost out to Germany in its bid to host the 2006 World Cup. This defeat came as a huge blow and disappointment to South Africans, a nation of football-lovers.
Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, football's world governing body, said he was stunned and horrified to hear of the stampede at Ellis Park, but stressed that it was too early to say if the tragedy would have any impact on the South Africa's hopes or affect its ability to stage the World Cup in 9 years.
Echoing other soccer executives, in and out of South Africa, Blatter said this was not the appropriate time to discuss the matter. "We must have the decency to bury the dead first...The priority then must be to obtain complete and exhaustive findings by the competent authorities on the causes of this latest tragedy in our game so that lessons can be drawn for the future. Football must do everything in its power (to ensure) that such disasters do not occur again."
