Incident at local track raises concerns about City of Cape Town's athletic resources for schools

Lester Kiewit speaks to Wesley Neumann, the technical official for Western Province High School Athletics and Councilor for the Good Party.

Interhouse and interschool athletics are underway.

However, a recent incident involving the bid for an athletics track raises the question of whether the city has allocated enough access to high-quality athletics facilities for learners.

On Monday afternoon (10 February), an interschool athletics day ran late and overlapped with the practice times of another group that had booked the same athletics track in Parow. This resulted in a hostile exchange between the two groups, which were 'fighting for the same resource while schools compete for limited resources.'

"Keep in mind, there are absolutely no facilities in the South, these schools [in the South] need to travel to Parow so it's expected that things do run a bit late here and there but it was an invasion from the athletics club onto the athletics meeting of a primary school which could've been handled differently," explains Neumann. 

The specific track needs to be booked and scheduled for schools to practice through the City of Cape Town, but 'there seems to be a sense of ownership, lack of tolerance and insensitivity from a particular community,' says Neumann.

"We are working with children; there's no need for adults in a club to invade the facility like they did. So, it's a combination of the two, sometimes athletics meetings run late if schools are travelling in excess of 30 to 40 kilometres to get to the venue in traffic... these things happen, but it should've been handled differently," believes Neumann. 

The incident provoked a conversation about whether the city has allocated enough access to high-quality athletics facilities for learners.

This problem predates 2006 and has not been addressed by the City since, says Neumann. 

"In about 2006/2007, the old Green Point athletics stadium closed down in preparation for the 2010 World Cup... why that is important is that the old Green Point Stadium could accommodate about 20 000 spectators at the time and since then the City hasn't replaced a stadium that can accommodate that amount of people... and what are the implications? We are now fighting for resources, we are under-resourced when it comes to facilities and we have schools competing for limited resources."

- Wesley Neumann, Technical Official - Western Province High School Athletics

"It seems like there's a systematic attack in terms of the lack of willingness from the City to address this. We all identify athletics as the one code that was used to transform community pride, build school pride and change learners' behaviour."

- Wesley Neumann, Technical Official - Western Province High School Athletics

Neumann says this incident relates to a more important issue: the fading tradition of athletics. Many have come to know athletics as school heritage and pride, but it is dying because there is not enough access for participation and spectators to gather at school athletics meets. 

"Currently, the only stadium that's compliant in terms of the by-laws and act is the Green Point Stadium which can accommodate 4500 maximum spectators, now if you think of eight schools competing and each school bring the average high school of 800-1000 learners then that premises is not suitable or big enough to accommodate everyone. So, what happens is certain schools opt not to bring the entire school and slowly but surely athletics is not on the same standards as it used to be."

- Wesley Neumann, Technical Official - Western Province High School Athletics