The jewel in South Africa's football crown was closed down last night - by thieves. Soccer City, the pride of the country's successful World Cup last year, was hurriedly shut down as a football venue yesterday when thieves broke through a manhole and stole cables connecting the stadium to the City of Johannesburg's electricity supply.

The venue, now knows as FNB stadium, was due to host an important Premier League soccer match tomorrow night, between Soweto rivals Kaizer Chiefs and Moroka Swallows. But the cable theft forced the cancellation of the match.

Plans to play the derby at another venue, probably on February 15, will be announced today by the Premier Soccer League.

Kaizer Chiefs refused to switch the game to Peter Mokaba stadium, in Polokwane, at such short notice.

"The cables were not stolen from inside the stadium," said PSL chief operations officer Ronnie Schloss. "They were probably stolen from a manhole dug out somewhere closer to the stadium, and that affected the power going into the venue. It is going to take some time to get the stadium ready again - perhaps just over a week."

The stadium hosted the opening match of the 2010 World Cup between Bafana Bafana and Mexico, and the final, in which Spain beat the Netherlands, in July.

Schloss said Kaizer Chiefs, who are using Soccer City as their home venue this season, will have to host Swallows at another venue.

The match cannot be played next week because of the Fifa calendar, according to which the club soccer season closes so that national teams can be in action. South Africa will play Kenya at the Royal Bafokeng stadium, also a World Cup venue, in Rustenburg, on Wednesday.

Jacques Grobbelaar, CEO of Stadium Management SA, which manages FNB stadium, said the decision to postpone the match was taken yesterday morning.

"We started testing stadium systems and we realised we were experiencing spikes in the power supply and ... the moment you get a spike the generators kick in. But if you get two or three spikes, you can damage the generators," he said.

"So we took the decision, in order to prevent longer-term serious damage, to take two or three days longer and do the necessary maintenance.

"We're talking about a R3.3-million asset here. It's very important to protect the integrity of that asset for future generations."

Grobbelaar would not say how much the postponement would cost, but said "you have to make the right decision, not always for commercial reasons".

He said the stadium will be ready to host the U2 rock concert scheduled for next weekend.

He said that almost half the faulty wiring had been replaced by yesterday and that the stadium would take steps to stop cable theft.

"It is a phenomenon in South Africa. I'm not looking to other parties to deal with it, we're going to extend activity into the precinct by putting out 24-hour patrol vehicles," he said.

Chiefs, who are second on the log table, two points adrift of leaders Orlando Pirates, were looking forward to facing the struggling Moroka Swallows, who have lost three league games in a row.

"There's nothing we can do about the match being postponed because of the theft of cables. It's like when it rains, you just have to accept it. But we are not going to play in Polokwane at such short notice because it's far," said Chiefs football manager, Bobby Motaung.

"The league is proposing a new date, but we will have to wait for them to make the announcement."

City Power spokesman Louis Pieterse said there had been a lot of cable theft in the neighbourhood of FNB stadium recently, much of it infrastructure for the World Cup.