Drunk football tourist lucky to be alive after passing out on JHB driveway

Posted by jonckie in June 5th 2010

An Australian backpacker in South Africa for the soccer World Cup passed out drunk in the driveway of a Johannesburg politician under the impression he was in Cape Town.

Woken after a bitterly cold night on the streets of South Africa’s commercial capital, 26-year-old Jerry Goding was given a cup of coffee, a hot shower and a lecture about looking after himself in one of the world’s most dangerous cities.

“It took a while to wake him up,” said Kate Lorimer, a member of the provincial parliament and opposition spokesperson on safety and security issues.

“He must have been absolutely frozen. It was the first really cold night we’ve had and he was in shorts, a soccer shirt and slops,” she said, adding that Goding was under the impression he was in Cape Town, 1 450km away.

Lorimer said she had warned Goding about the hazards of a country with one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime and murder.

“I gave him a gentle lecture about not doing that sort of thing again,” she told Reuters. “He was bloody lucky.”

Temperatures in Johannesburg, which at around 1 500 metres above sea level can drop to zero in June at the start of the southern hemisphere winter, have dipped to around five degrees celsius during the night this week.

[Reuters]

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Road Safety during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa