CAPE TOWN, Nov 5: Nelson Mandela threw his weight behind South Africa’s bid for the 2010 World Cup finals on Wednesday, saying the tournament would be a tribute to the country’s peaceful transition from apartheid rule to democracy.

On the final day of a FIFA inspection trip to South Africa, Mandela guided a team of inspectors around the apartheid-era prison of Robben Island off Cape Town and showed them the cell where he was held captive for 18 years.

The Nobel Peace laureate — a revered symbol of his country’s new, multi-racial democracy — said the world owed South Africa the chance to stage the World Cup to reward it for eschewing violence as it shook off white-only rule almost 10 years ago.

“We surprised the whole world which predicted there would be carnage in this country,” Mandela told the group. “We need to be rewarded for that.

“It would therefore be a wonderful gift, and the world would be saying ‘thank you’ for the lead we have given...I think the world owes us that gesture,” the 85-year-old Mandela said.

FIFA team head Jan Peeters, president of Belgium’s football association, told Mandela that world soccer’s governing body had backed South Africa in its fight against apartheid, boycotting the country when it was under white rule and designating the 2010 World Cup as the first to be staged in Africa.

“You know that we are not allowed to make a statement (on) who will win this bid,” Peeters said. “But I can assure you that your people, the bidding committee, did a very good job.”

The Robben Island trip capped a week-long visit by the five-man team charged with assessing South Africa’s eight proposed venues as well as taking in hospitals and tourist sites.

South Africa was pipped at the post by Germany in a controversial FIFA vote over the venue for the 2006 tournament. This time they hope to see off rival bids from Morocco, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia to host Africa’s first soccer World Cup.

South Africa bid chairman Danny Jordaan said Mandela — who became South Africa’s first black president in 1994 with the end of apartheid — had been a long-time proponent of bringing the world soccer championship to the country.—Reuters