This World Cup is bad for South Africa for many reasons. Underneath all the hype hides the greed and the manipulation of facts and statistics.
Even if it all goes well, and that's a huge 'if', it's unlikely that any more than a small fraction of the money coming into the country will filter through to benefit the most needy. Most of it will benefit the large hotel chains, tour operators, and the airlines. The only permanent benefit may be an improvement of the road infrastructure in and around the venues, and we've paid for that with the massive inconvenience and disruption to traffic flows over the last couple of years. I'm excluding the Gautrain, as someone else has already pointed out, it wasn't foreseen as part of the World Cup planning, and its pricing places it way out of reach of the masses, so it will do nothing to relieve traffic congestion.
Security, health, and education for the poor are not going to see great benefits, and it is doubtful whether there will be any real improvement in mass transportation.
The greed and so called 'price gouging' practised by the hotel chains, airlines, and private individuals looking to cash in on the opportunity have already left a bad taste. I hope, and expect, that many of them will regret this as they will be left with unsold capacity which they will at the last minute have to dump and take a loss. Good. I think we'll see a lot of those extra flights mentioned by previous posters suddenly disappearing from the schedules.
If there is no serious crime affecting visitors, it may well improve the image of South Africa. I only hope that the measures which are supposedly being put in place will be effective, but I am not too confident that this will be so. This feeling is shared by many outsiders to whom I've spoken, who quite simply feel that SA is 'too dangerous' for them to go to. Whilst I don't agree, I do sympathise.
As someone with absolutely no interest whatsoever in football, in fact I have a profound dislike for the culture surrounding it, I will be taking a great interest in how this saga unfolds. I hope my pessimism is proved wrong.