M&G: A tale of two stadiums

http://za.mg.co.za/article/2010-05-20-a-tale-of-two-stadiums

A tale of two stadiums
NIREN TOLSI | JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – May 20 2010 18:07

They have sports heroes on the Cape Flats too. Names of footballers such as Calvin Peterson, the Valentine brothers, Peter and Kevin, and Neville “The Athlone Ghost” Londt roll off the tongues of people whose memories stretch back to apartheid.

These are players revered as much for their skill on the pitch — at Athlone stadium, especially — as they are for their role in the political fight that was intertwined with sport in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.

“We watched and played Sacos [South African Council of Sport] sport here and discussed the matters of the day, becoming conscientised as youngsters,” says Athlone stadium manager Shahied Adams. “There were political rallies and you knew you had arrived as a sportsperson if you got on to this pitch.”

Sacos was the radical umbrella body for black sports organisations during apartheid that propagated the ideal of “no normal sport in an abnormal society”. Led by administrators such as Hassan Howa, it lobbied successfully for a moratorium on white South African teams playing international sport as a weapon against apartheid.

“That is why it hurts that Athlone is not a World Cup venue. This stadium is the home of nonracial sport and nonracialism in Cape Town. If you wanted the World Cup to reflect South Africa, its history and where we are now, then Athlone should have been used,” said Adams.

Initially touted as a host stadium by both the Western Cape government and the City of Cape Town, Athlone was discarded in favour of building a new stadium in Green Point with a R4,5-billion price-tag and a 68 000-spectator capacity, 13 000 of which is temporary seating.

The decision to build the new stadium was at Fifa’s insistence: it preferred the camera-friendly aesthetics of Table Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean near Green Point over the slums surrounding Athlone.

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille said she commissioned a study in 2006 to examine the viability of the new stadium and alternative sites: “Upgrading Newlands rugby stadium was the best option … But I was told in no uncertain terms by Fifa that it was either Green Point or Johannesburg. It was either we go ahead with building the new stadium or Cape Town was going to lose out on the World Cup.”

But Cape Town’s new stadium is far from Cape Town’s playing fields.

In Bonteheuwel, near Athlone, Bluegum United Football Club’s chairperson, Lindsay Daniels, is overseeing the coaching of their various junior sides: from under-nines to under-17s. With scant resources — both for the club and for the impoverished youngsters — he is determined to keep football alive.

“Sponsorship for grassroots football is hard to come by,” he said. “We get no money from Safa and we never hear from government departments like education and sport. We struggle, taking money from our pockets for kits, balls and training equipment.”

It is a common refrain among the numerous football club administrators. Said Claude Brown, the president of Atlantis Football Association and Aberdeen FC: “Safa provides training for our administrators and coaches — that’s great — but it’s hard to stomach things like a R1million incentive for Bafana to score a goal during the World Cup when we are getting nothing at grassroots level. And where is the development plan that should have been in place as a soccer legacy?”

Norman Arendse, president of Safa Cape Town, is candid about the “fatal” top-down approach to sports administration, which leaves grassroots structures “with crumbs”. But he’s also realistic. “Ideally, we should have upgraded Athlone — a monument to nonracialism — and spent that extra R3-billion to R4-billion on sports infrastructure in the townships. But that’s not how things work.”

For Wayne Weitz, the general secretary of Sea Point Swifts, which celebrate their 90th anniversary this year, football is not merely sport.

“We’ve nurtured role models and contributed to society during apartheid through teaching responsibility and political awareness. Now, too, when kids are faced with things like drugs, gangsterism and negativity all around, we try to change their lives,” said Weitz.

Hawks chief Anwa Dramat is reputed to have been politicised as a young footballer when learning about Sea Point Swifts’ history: the club was forcibly moved from Sea Point in the 1960s to Green Point because of the Group Areas Act. Later, they were moved to Athlone and finally to Bonteheuwel.

Weitz said holding matches at the stadium in Green Point will leave “no legacy whatsoever for communities where football is played. We can’t afford to go there, or to get tickets.”

The organising committee spin doctors and politicians will have us believe that football will come full circle to Green Point: the first football match in Cape Town is reputed to have been played there — but under Winchester Rules, which allowed the use of hands.

But that is a small circle that excludes those who live and breathe the game far away from the picturesque surroundings of Table Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean.