David Bullard: Now is the winter of our discount tents

For a mere R23000 per person per head you can spend three nights in a camp in the Cradle of Personkind and they will lay on everything for you except booze and tickets to the games. All meals, transport to the games, gum boot dancers, a safari drive and visits to local shopping malls are covered in that R7 500 a night tariff.

SHOOT: The exchange rate between the Mighty Pound and the Rand isn't quite what it used to be... Match tickets aren't the cheapest either at a time when the world economy is dragging its heels, to put it mildly. That, the world's situation economically, I think is the biggest factor at play here...

clipped from www.moneyweb.co.za JOHANNESBURG - When a friend told me a year ago that there was to be a tented village set up in the Cradle of Personkind in the Magaliesberg I thought he was joking. Who, I wondered, would want to live under canvas during one of the coldest months of the year? As he correctly pointed out to me, most people coming to the World Cup think that Africa basks in perpetual sunshine and it hasn't occurred to them that summer in the northern hemisphere equals winter in the southern. Moreover, they haven't a clue (and probably wouldn't believe you if you told them) about our cold dry Highveld winters. Anyway, I logged on to Google and tapped in "tented camps World Cup 2010" and, sure enough, there are many camps to choose from scattered around the country; evidence indeed that South Africa would never have had adequate accommodation for the expected invasion.