Diepkloof, Johannesburg - The goalposts went up first, acting as a metaphor for the challenge that lay ahead over the following 24 hours in South Africa's Soweto township: to build a public park from a piece of wasteland in a single day.

Under pressure to meet its targets on greening areas that were starved of trees and parks under apartheid by the 2010 football World Cup, Johannesburg City Parks pulled together all its resources this week and pressed fast-forward.

The inspiration for the two-hectare Diepkloof Xtreme Park came from the Extreme Makeover television series, in which people first, then homes, around the world, offer themselves up for rapid facelift.

The beautification of Diepkloof, a poor Soweto district of matchbox houses and high crime levels, began at 5 p. m. on Thursday evening.

With six hours to go to the unveiling of the park by Johannesburg Mayor Amos Masondo Friday, around 200 workers were still busy unrolling bales of instant grass and planting flowers and trees.

The basketball court had yet to be tarred and and the ground under the children's swings was waiting for a protective coating.

But a bulldozer was already smoothing a sand soccer pitch, new pathways wound past a freshly-plastered ablutions block. And a giant TV screen, on which Sowetans who cannot afford to attend the matches will be able to watch the World Cup, had been erected.

"We've taken our lead from 2006 World Cup in Germany," Jenny Moodley, spokeswoman for the Parks body said, adding: "It's going to be a hard act to follow.

For the 2006 tournament Germany set itself ambitious targets ("Green Goals) on water conservation, recycling and reducing emissions.

Johannesburg has its own World Cup environmental legacy programme, aimed at, among other things, greening disadvantaged areas like Soweto by giving them 200,000 trees.

With over 6 million trees, more per square kilometre than any other city in the world, Johannesburg is the world's largest urban jungle.

But the leafy canopy is very unequally dispersed.

The wealthy, mainly white suburbs to the north of the city are home to most of Johannesburg's trees and 78 per cent of its parks - although residents of these areas rarely use public parks.

The areas into which the non-white population was crammed during apartheid still have little to no shade from the blistering African sun - and no green lung to absorb the dust from the city's gold mines.

Soweto is coated in dust from the mine dumps that delineate the township to the north.

"To address the backlog of environmental amenities - trees, parks, nature reserves - in previously disadvantaged (black, coloured and Indian areas) we need about 1.2 billion rand," says Luther Williamson, managing director of Johannesburg City Parks.

At the Parks current level of funding - 40 million rand for new projects in 2008 - redressing the imbalance will take 30 years.

Hence gimmicky "extreme" projects, that attract media attention and, hopefully, more corporate sponsorship.

A South African cement company, PPC, donated 450 bags of cement and a handful of employees, who spent the morning planting flowers.

"This is like an archaeological dig," Craig Waterson, PPC sales and marketing director, says, hacking at a flower bed with a hoe. "Over there we found a piece of pink porcelain."

"It's going to be nice as long as there's security,"says Vincent Mkhumbeni, a young man from Diepkloof standing in line for a "piece job" (casual job) laying grass.

The media company, Primedia, that donated the giant screen, on which Sowetans will watch two local football teams do battle on Saturday, has also thrown in 24-hour security. (dpa)