The paper-strewn desk in Mike Moody�s office is a substantial piece of furniture, but then the buck that stops there is pretty massive as well.

The paper-strewn desk in Mike Moody's office is a substantial piece of furniture, but then the buck that stops there is pretty massive as well.

You could measure it by the 3.5bn rand contract he manages or the workforce of 3500 who ultimately take their orders from him, but even those numbers don't explain just how big his job is. Far better to say that the 63-year-old Englishman holds the reputation of a nation in his hands.

Not that he'd put it that way himself. Genial and burly, big numbers have been the stuff of Moody's life since he emigrated to South Africa with his new wife and his newly minted degree in civil engineering 40 years ago.

In all that time he has only ever worked for one company, Grinaker-LTA, and he is not remotely fazed by the sort of mind-boggling figures that the rest of us struggle to comprehend. Roads, bridges, dams: he's done them all.

But this is the big one.

This is Soccer City, the striking stadium that is taking spectacular shape on the western edge of Johannesburg which will host the opening game and the final of next year's World Cup.

The surrounding countryside is dominated by the vast spoil heaps of the gold industry on which the city was built and, as he walks down the players' tunnel, Moody points out that its slope and rough ochre walls have been modelled on the entrance to a mine shaft. It is a respectful nod to the past in a project that is all about South Africa's future.

As relaxed as Moody might be in his position as project director of the Soccer City development, the rest of South Africa is almost frantic with worry about getting the World Cup right. Less than two decades after the country turned its back on the nightmare of apartheid and reinvented itself as a fully democratic society, the global festival of football is seen as the greatest opportunity South Africa could have to present itself as a fully fledged modern nation. Or, as the doomsayers would have it, to embarrass itself in the eyes of the world as a crime-ridden, dysfunctional state that is teetering on the precipice of toppling back into the third world.

If Soccer City is any sort of metaphor then the optimists should prevail. The project was late into its stride as Moody and his team only moved on to the site in February 2007, but it has moved forward at an astonishing rate.

"There's panic, but it's controlled panic," he said with a laugh. "We're on schedule and the stadium itself will be finished in two months' time. By the end of December it will be fully operational and ready to stage a football match."

As he speaks, laser-guided machinery is levelling the soil of the pitch, final preparation for being planted with grass. Like any construction, the most obvious progress is made towards the end of the project, and Moody is happy with how things are going.

"Basically, we started a year too late with all the stadiums," he explained. "But we managed to catch up and we'll finish them all on time. All the grounds will be well inside the time limits. But yes, it would have been a lot easier if we had started a year earlier. We had some nervous times with the unions early on, but we struck a good deal and this is the only stadium construction that hasn't had a strike."

Moody points to the floodlights that are already installed and fully operational. To meet the demands of high-definition television, it will be the most well-lit stadium in the world. In a country where power cuts are an almost daily fact of life, it would hardly be the most persuasive form of public relations for games to be plunged into darkness, a possibility that has already been addressed.

"There have been problems with power," he conceded. "All the stadiums will run fully on generators and the national power system is actually our back-up. It's definitely one of the fears, but one of the ironic things about the economy not doing so well at the moment is that industry is using less electricity so there is far more power available."

South Africa has just dipped into recession for the first time in the post-apartheid era. If the unexpected bonus of that is it is now possible to watch an entire film on television without suffering a blackout halfway through, there is also an almost palpable fear in the wider society that more poverty and unemployment will only add to the massive crime problems. And try as some South Africans might, there is no getting away from the fact crime casts a huge shadow across the nation.

The epidemic of violence may have dipped from the astronomical peak it reached a few years ago, but the most recent statistics show that the murder rate still stands at 38.6 per 100,000 and rape at 75 per 100,000.

In blunt terms, you are 50 times more likely to die a violent death in South Africa than western Europe. Homicide statistics are notoriously difficult to collate or confirm, but it is generally accepted that South Africa has held second place in the world murder table for the past few years, behind - at different times - Colombia, Venezuela and Iraq.

Car-jackings, hold-ups and other assorted forms of violent robbery are also commonplace. "If you keep your wits about you then you'll be all right," is typical advice, but applying that advice means that large parts of the major cities are now effectively no-go areas. Even in the plush malls of Johannesburg's northern suburbs, the panic alarms in the public toilets are not there in case the soap dispensers run dry. Nor is the razor wire and electric fencing that is all so conspicuous in middle-class neighbourhoods there for any sort of decorative effect.

South Africa has been indulging in an orgy of self-congratulation over the Confederations Cup, which ended last weekend with Brazil's 3-2 victory over the USA at Ellis Park. It was, unquestionably, a huge success. Vivid, colourful and exciting, it also extended football's reach as rugby supporters, still predominantly white, were caught up in the excitement.

There were hiccups along the way - the Brazilian and Egyptian teams both claimed they had been robbed in their hotels and the spectator transport system was farcical - but Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, awarded South Africa seven out of 10 overall.

Yet as a dry run for the World Cup, the Confederations tournament was flawed. Only eight teams took part and the number of travelling supporters was minuscule. South Africa was put to the test, but to nowhere near breaking point. The leader columns of South African newspapers rightly declared the Confederation Cup had been a success, but wrongly claimed that it had shown that the country was ready for next year's event.

With an influx of foreign supporters estimated at between 300,000 and 500,000 for the tournament, South Africa looks likely to be creaking at the seams.

The country's own tourism authority estimates that on some nights Gauteng province (Johannesburg and surrounding areas) could be 65,000 beds short, with major shortfalls in other cities as well. The British and Irish Lions' current tour has probably been a better test of the nation's infrastructure than the Confederations event, and a spate of robberies from rugby fans in bed-and-breakfast establishments in Durban did not cast the country in a flattering light.

"We have so many thieves in this country," said a South African journalist with a bleak laugh. "They will be licking their lips over the World Cup. It's bad enough when there are no visitors here, but it will be 10 times worse if they come in the kind of numbers that are being talked about."

And yet, there is also so much about South Africa that stands as a beacon for the continent as a whole.

It has its problems, but as its splendid new stadiums take shape - those in Cape Town and Durban are spectacular as well - there is still a strong sense that the country will make sport a force for good, just as it did when the Rainbow Nation came to life behind the Rugby World Cup here in 1995.

That tournament was in doubt until almost a month before it began, but by its finish it was being judged a fabulous success. "South Africa is fantastic at sorting things out at the last minute," said Moody.

And his confident smile tells you that they'll sort things out next year, too.