It's a choice of food or football for Semisa

In part, that is because she does not really like the sport.– “My sons love playing with a football but I’ve never really seen the point of running around so much” – but the primary explanation for her abstinence is one of finance.

Semisa earns around 1,500 rand (£150) a month and supports a family that includes an out-of-work husband, two grandparents and six children. Even the cheapest World Cup ticket, which FIFA claims is ‘subsidised’ to make it more affordable to black South Africans, costs around £15, or a tenth of Semisa’s entire monthly earnings.

“Really the choice was simple,” she says. “It was food or football. I would have liked my eldest son Thomas to have seen one of the matches in the stadium but in the end I chose food.”

One imagines that Semisa is not alone. South Africa has made some giant strides forward since the end of apartheid in the early 1990s but three quarters of its citizens earn less than 50,000 rand (around £5,000) a year and of that three quarters, 83 per cent are black.

The official unemployment rate is 25 per cent, the highest in the middle-ranking group of nations in terms of development, but that does not take account of those who have given up looking for work. Factor that into the equation and the South African Bureau for Market Research feels the true figure could be nearer 40 per cent.

Semisa regards herself as “one of the lucky ones”, yet she has effectively been excluded from the World Cup that is occurring on her doorstep. Literally on her doorstep as it happens, as from the window of her Soweton home, she can just about make out the top of the Soccer City Stadium in which Friday evening’s opening match between South Africa and Mexico will be played.

Soccer City is one of ten stadia that have either been built or renovated for the first World Cup to be played in Africa and, once additional infrastructural improvements are added to the bill, the South African government are looking at a financial commitment that has already surpassed the billion-dollar mark.

It is hard to see how Semisa has benefited from a cent of that, so what are her feelings as the start of the tournament approaches?

“The money doesn’t matter,” she says. “Whatever the government choose to spend their money on, it doesn’t really have any effect on my life. I’d rather they spent money on something like this than on lining their own pockets or on businesses and people that don’t need their help.”

But what are the positives she sees in this tournament, an event that appears to have captivated black South Africans, even though a majority will play no part in it?

“I don’t want to offend but you do not know what it is like to be South African,” she explains. “For the whole of our lives, we have been told what we cannot do. In the olden days, it was ‘You cannot go there because you are black’. Now, it is ‘You cannot do that because you are South African, not American or European’.

“We saw that when the tournament was given to South Africa. Everyone said we could not do it, that it would be a disaster and nothing would be ready on time. Well we can do it and we will. That makes me extremely proud. We are a proud people who are as good as anyone else.”

There is, of course, another side to the coin. Across the road from the hotel in which I am staying, Eddie Spiers is the part-owner of a restaurant. He is white, the product of an Afrikaans mother and an Italian father, but considers himself to be 100 per cent South African.

He is a keen sportsman but his preferred game is cricket rather than football. Two years ago, he played in the same Glen Vista club side as Durham and England fast bowler Steve Harmison, who was keeping himself fit ahead of the Ashes.

He watches the occasional football game on television – “I tend to cheer for Manchester United, but I used to like Leeds” – but has never previously set foot in a stadium to watch an organised match.

That will all change this month. Eddie has tickets to two Italy games – “a long-standing promise to my father” – and while he was unable to get a seat for the opening game involving South Africa, he will be in the Loftus Versveld Stadium in Pretoria when ‘Bafana Bafana’ (the South African national team) take on Uruguay next Wednesday night.

“Look,” he says in explanation. “Whatever you might read or think you know about South Africa, we are all one people. We might not live side by side every day but we are all South Africans and we all care about our country.

“Every so often, we get a chance to express that. The Rugby World Cup in 1995 was a great example and because football is such a global game, this is even bigger.

“It never even crossed my mind not to go to a game because football was supposed to be a black sport. This is one of the biggest moments in South African history and I want to be a part of it.”

But while the Rugby World Cup was seen to have powerful and reasonably long-standing effects because of its scheduling at the dawn of post-Apartheid existence, might the current tournament not simply be a fleeting hiatus in a longer-term political climate that most observers feel is becoming increasingly racially polarised?

“I hope not,” says Eddie. “We have accomplished a lot as a nation since the end of apartheid but there is clearly still a lot more to do. If the football World Cup can play even a tiny part in that, it will have been worthwhile.

“If nothing else, I think it will be a reminder that we all have a vested interest in securing the future of our nation. Forget everything else that supposedly divides us, for the next few weeks, we are all ‘Bafana Bafana’ fans.”