For the first time in the 37 years he has served the school, Meadowridge Primary School in Lentegeur could not hold its annual athletics day this year due to a lack of facilities, Principal Mr Norman Daniels said. A number of other schools in the area have also been forced to cancel athletics. Soccer has also had to move out of the area to Westridge and Portlands, with the result that many soccer-loving children have dropped out of the sport. Around the corner from Meadowridge Primary is the Lentegeur Sports Complex which used to boast cricket, soccer and baseball pitches. Today, besides a single field maintained by Collegians Rugby Club, the place is derelict and dangerous.
Instead of children playing on green fields, they are shepherded across the wasteland to and from school in walking buses led by senior citizens. “Last year, we lost one of our learners on these fields,” Mr Daniels said.
City of Cape Town has permitted a section of the carpark to be used by car enthusiasts for spinning – which members of the community describe not only as dangerous but illegal. Mr Daniels said the Lentegeur Sports Complex was poorly maintained for years, and then the drought was the “straw that finally broke the camel’s back”. His school was told to use an athletics facility in Khayelitsha, but this was impossible due to red tape. “There was a rule stating there must be a minimum of five schools competing… we went to the City to plead we were only three schools. “When I had to inform the school there couldn’t be athletics, some of them were in tears.” Shabeer van Niekerk runs an indoor soccer club in the area due to there being no outdoor facilities. “There was a rule stating there must be a minimum of five schools competing… we went to the City to plead we were only three schools. “When I had to inform the school there couldn’t be athletics, some of them were in tears.” Shabeer van Niekerk runs an indoor soccer club in the area due to there being no outdoor facilities. “We have quality kids in Mitchell’s Plain, but I don’t know where to go or what to do,” he says. It is not only young people who suffer. Yumna Mohammed of the Lobelia Senior Citizens Club in the area said the City Games was approaching, in March, but there was nowhere for participants to practice. And it is not only Mitchell’s Plain that is suffering the effects of the City of Cape Town’s lack of concern about people living on the Cape Flats. In January, Western Cape sports bodies were angry after the City of Cape Town cancelled an inter-school event at the eleventh hour at the Vygieskraal Stadium. Western Province High Schools Athletics chairperson Deon Wertheim was quoted saying: “We were informed on Friday that we can no longer use the stadium because the facility is non-compliant.This is a City facility that has been unkempt and we represent over 800 schools.” The Western Cape’s State of the Province Address was held at the Rocklands Centre in Mitchells Plain, at an estimated cost of about R2 million. With 6 000 schoolchildren still not placed in schools, and a shortage of teachers, this money would have been better spent on education. In his speech, the Premier repeated many of last year’s promises without saying what had actually been achieved. He did
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