Johannesburg  - With exactly one year to go to kick-off in the 2010 football World Cup in South Africa, the organizers of the tournament were thumbing their noses at the sceptics Thursday and assuring preparations were on the ball.

On June 11, 2010, the first salvo in the first World Cup on the African continent will be fired at Soccer City stadium outside Johannesburg, where home side Bafana Bafana meets an as yet unknown opponent.

Various events are planned to mark the milestone.

In Cape Town, political, business and civil society leaders attending the World Economic Forum on Africa were discussing the World Cup's legacy.

Public radio was also calling on South Africans to tog themselves out in Bafana yellow and sing along to a broadcast of the national anthem at 4 p. m. (1400 GMT), the starting time of the opening ceremony next year.

Later, South African President Jacob Zuma and Western Cape premier Helen Zille were due to get a tour of Cape Town's Greenpoint stadium, the venue for one of the semi-finals that is still being built.

Five of the 10 stadiums being built or upgraded for the tournament are already completed.

The 68,00-seat Greenpoint stadium, which sits between Table Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean, is running right up against the FIFA delivery deadline of December 2009.

Addressing commentators in South Africa and Europe, who had questioned South Africa's ability to host the tournament, Danny Jordaan, chief executive of the FIFA World Cup local organizing committee said Thursday: ".. finally it's a given, an accepted reality."

Writing in The Star newspaper, Jordaan accused the doubters, who feared South Africa could lose the tournament because of high crime rates and political uncertainty, of questioning Nelson Mandela's legacy of nation-building.

Enthusiasm among South Africans for the World Cup has risen markedly as the tournament approaches. Speaking at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday Zuma said the Cup had created over 400,000 job opportunities.

Ticket sales have also been brisk.

Of the total 630,021 tickets sold by Wednesday, nearly half have gone to South Africans. The next biggest supporters, in ticket terms, are the United States, followed by Britain, Germany and Australia.

The real test of the country's preparedness starts Sunday when the two-week Confederations Cup, a dress rehearsal for the World Cup, gets underway between Brazil, Italy, Spain, the United States, Iraq, Egypt, New Zealand and South Africa.

Thousands of police and private security have been deployed to protect footballers, fans and officials in four host cities.

On Thursday, government resumed talks with the minibus taxi industry to try to get new bus systems planned for four cities back on track ahead of the World Cup. Some of the taxi owners are opposing the new systems - a key component of the World Cup legacy - saying the bigger buses will cause them job and revenue losses. (dpa)