Homeless South Africans complained they were being forced from the streets of Cape Town to make way for a host of star-studded, glamorous events surrounding next year's World Cup tournament.

Isaac Lewis, 41, said Thursday that police have arrested him for loitering six times in the past month. Before that, Lewis said police mostly left him alone. He said he's been homeless for most of his life.

Police harassment "is increasing, everyday it's increasing," he said. "It's because they want to make a good impression for the foreigners coming. We are like insects to them, or flies."

Football officials and a host of international celebrities descended on the seaside city ahead of Friday's gala tournament draw.

Lewis spoke on the eve of the draw ceremony, which was to include Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a recorded address by Nelson Mandela, and a street concert. South Africa, where more than a quarter of the work force is unemployed and millions live in poverty, is hoping for an economic boost from the hundreds of thousands of tourists expected to the World Cup.

Lesley de Rueck, Cape Town's director of 2010 operations, denied the city was pressuring the homeless for the World Cup's sake. Felicity Purchase, a city councilwoman and member of a mayoral committee on economic development and tourism, said that the city wanted to get people off the streets for their own good as well as to keep the city "tidy."

Linzi Thomas, who founded a project to help street children and the homeless, was convinced Friday's draw ceremony and next year's tournament are the reasons that local authorities have been pressuring the homeless in recent months to move off the streets and into settlements like Blikkiesdorp, a grim camp on the outskirts of Cape Town.

Ziettha Meyer, 29, said she was taken off the streets and brought to Blikkiesdorp by a social worker who threatened to throw her in jail if she didn't go.

"She just came and dropped us here like we were a bunch of chickens," she said. "We didn't have a choice."

Shamielh Du Toit, 33, said she moved to Blikkiesdorp under similar circumstances six months ago.

"They came to us and said, 'people you must move away from here because we are cleaning up for the World Cup,'" she said.

Du Toit said the nearest train station to her shack is a 30-minute walk. She said can't afford the $2 roundtrip fare to Cape Town, so she can't look for work in the city. When she was living on the streets of Cape Town, she said she worked in a convenience store, earning about $7 a day.