Apart from fretting about the fortunes of Bafana Bafana, the South African population seems to be spending the majority of the World Cup worrying about how the tournament is going down in the rest of the world.

I've already lost track of the number of times I've been asked, 'So what is England thinking about South Africa now?'

Before I answer, I tend to ask South Africans want they imagine the English image of their country to be. The response is generally the same, whether the question is asked to black or white, rich or poor.

“They think one of two things. If we are living in a city, they think we are being held up at gunpoint and robbed. If we are living in the countryside, they think we are running away from lions and cheetahs.”

Sadly, they're probably about right. The perception of South Africa tends to be that it is dangerous and under-developed. There are areas of the country that are both, but if this World Cup achieves nothing else, it should create a new image of a nation that has come an awfully long way in a short space of time, and is determined to go further.

Obviously, I've been based over here, so I don't have a particularly great handle on how all of this is going down at home. My hope, though, is that many of the critics and naysayers are having to eat their words.

The stadiums have been built on time, the infrastructure, save for an odd traffic jam in Rustenburg, is holding up and the local population are thrilled to be hosting the biggest football tournament in the world, even if a majority of them can't afford a ticket.

Football should not be a preserve of the rich in the west, and seeing the pride this World Cup is conferring on the South African nation merely makes me even more convinced that bringing the competition here was the right thing to do.

Whether it is enough to change perceptions at home remains to be seen, but if nothing else, the tournament must have made people aware that there is much more to South Africa than the tired stereotypes or tourist traps around Cape Town.

The South African government gambled that a multi-billion dollar investment would be worthwhile if it changed the country's image abroad. My hope, less than a week into the tournament, is that the gamble is paying off.

It might have paid off even more had FIFA devised a sensible ticketing policy for a country in which the average annual salary is less than $15,000.

With the exception of the opening match between South Africa and Mexico, every other game has been blighted by the sight of rows of empty seats.

FIFA set their prices too high from the off, and the result has been a slower-than-anticipated take up in the domestic South African market. With the global recession having dampened the corporate desire for ticketing packages, a number of grounds are operating at up to 5-6,000 below capacity.

FIFA's response was to release a new batch of cut-price tickets to South Africans, but even that does not appear to have worked.

There are any number of explanations for why the system failed, but perhaps the most telling came from South African transport minister Sbu Ndebele.

He said: “It could be that they (the tickets) were distributed to people who did not have means of transportation.”

Of the 83,000 supporters who did make it into Soccer City yesterday, I'd hazard a guess that a massive majority of the non-South African fan base was from Holland.

There was orange absolutely everywhere, and while English supporters are rightly praised for their willingness to travel in numbers, it's always hard not to be impressed by the Dutch.

Wigs, jackets, boiler suits, mini skirts – you name it, if you can get it in Holland, it's guaranteed to be available in orange.

The award for best fancy dress went elsewhere though, thanks to the presence of a female Dutch fan in a milk maid outfit. That was impressive enough, but it was the two men alongside her who had come as a pantomime horse that really stole the day.

I've been wondering why the suburb of Johannesburg I'm staying in reminds me of England, and I've finally realised it's because all the street names are linked to Norfolk and Suffolk.

The suburb is called Mulbarton, and it shares its name with a small village 20-or-so miles south of Norwich. The street with my guest house in is called The Broads St, and there's also a Lowestoft Road, a Dereham Drive and a King's Lynn Court.

Nobody seems to know why, although the theory is that it was a quirky member of the Johannesburg town planning unit who had emigrated from East Anglia.

Given that Johannesburg is the furthest of the world's biggest 50 cities away from water, though, there hasn't been a canal boat in sight.