South Africa is over 1500 miles from Angola - the distance from the UK to Russia. Each time there are problems in Russia the UK does not come under scrutiny. South Africa is a much more politically stable and economically prosperous country.

Just because it shares a continent with Angola it is unfair to label it as unsafe. The press have been unfair on the continent as a whole, always focusing on its problems and creating a bad image of Africa. Adebayor, who was one of the players who suffered during the shooting, stated "We keep repeating [that] Africa, we have to change our image if we want to be respected, and unfortunately that is not happening". The media in the West is highly responsible for this.

Cabinda is not even part of mainland Angola, to get to it you have to travel through the Congo, a very unstable country where militias who have caused trouble in many other countries, such as the LRA and Genocidaires, are said to be based and which can in no way be termed as 'secure'. It is the Cabinda region, not Angola as a country which has a security problem and therefore South Africa's own situation cannot be likened to events in Cabinda in any way.

South Africa does not have any separatist movements, or armed extremist groups like FLEC. There has been no terrorism there since the beginning of democracy in 1994. Even if there were separatist movements the Olympics took place in Barcelona despite there being a Catalan separatist movement which concerned that area and the world cup took place in France despite it having problems with Basque separatists.

South Africa was chosen as a safe place to host the Twenty20 Indian premier league last year after security concerns in India - nothing has changed since then, there have been no terrorist or extremist attacks in the country. As stated by chief organiser Danny Joordan said "the event of Angola has absolutely nothing to do with South Africa and absolutely nothing to do with the World Cup in South Africa."

The Munich Olympics still continued in 1972 after the massacre of members of the Israeli olympic team. A day after London was given the 2012 Olympics terrorist attacks killed 56 people on the tube and a London bus. The 2012 Olympics were not given to another country because of these events. Terrorism is a global threat, if we only organised sports events in countries with a low threat of terrorism, or on continents where terrorism had never occurred we would only be left with Antarctica, not exactly an ideal sporting location!

The African Cup of Nations has continued in Angola and matches have been played in Cabinda without any acts of terrorism occurring. If this tournament is going ahead why would one in a different country, 3 and a half hours away by plane, in six months time, not go ahead?

One thing associated with football is holiganism, extremism (certain football teams in Poland have been associated with neo-nazism) and generally the sport does not get a lot of good press. I am not comparing holiganism with shootings or saying that with football we should expect such tragic occurances. The British Lions had a successful (unfortunalety not in results wise) tour to South Africa with no troubles and yes South Africa may be in a better position to deal with hugh scale events, however it as a country also has various crime related issues as most countries in Africa do. This is not the first violent attack that has occurred within the football arena, it may have been more widely covered as it was an attack on the football team. But how many football fans have lost their life due to 'rival' attacks?