"What happened was absolutely a disaster for all the families of all those people who died - a tragedy. I spoke to a couple of players and they could not believe what was happening."

The game between South Africa's biggest clubs - Kaiser and Orlando Pirates - was a 68,000 sell-out.

But hundreds of others supporters with tickets were reportedly locked out and when they tried to get into an already full stadium, disaster struck.

"When Kaiser play Orlando Pirates, there is more than 100,000 people who want to come to watch the games," said Radebe, who was born in Johannesburg.

"Football has grown since we were re-admitted to international football, and when games like this come up everybody wants to go.

"Everything has to be perfect. Things like this have been avoided at all costs."

However, the Leeds' United defender added: "Things like this have happened before.

"When I played one of the games against Orlando Pirates a similar thing happened and about 25 people died that day. That was about seven or eight years ago. It might have been even 10 years ago."

Radebe believes safety will improve at South African stadia as a result of the Ellis Park tragedy.

"Things like this do happen and you do learn from them, especially in a country which always tries to get better. Things will improve," he said.

"This highlights some of the problems and hopefully things like this will never happen now.

"It is when these things happen that you must ask the questions."

However, Charlton's South African international defender Mark Fish fears the incident may affect the country's chances of being awarded the 2010 World Cup Finals.

He said: "This could be a dent for 2010. A lot of people will blame each other."