Durban - Sports clubs in Durban will not be given long-term leases by the eThekwini Municipality unless they transform.
This is according to the head of eThekwini Parks and Recreation, Thembinkosi Ngcobo, responding on Wednesday to concerns by sports clubs over the municipality’s decade-long policy of only granting them month-to-month leases. The sports clubs say this policy has led to many clubs closing their doors and disinvestment in those remaining.
The concerns grew louder this week after the municipality revealed plans to evict one of Durban’s oldest sports clubs, Berea Rovers, from its premises near King’s Park stadium, to make way for development of a Liverpool Football Club academy.
Berea Rovers, as with nearly 40 other sports clubs in the city, has been on a month-to-month lease with the municipality, which in 2004 stopped renewing leases on council property to sporting bodies, pending a policy review.
Ngcobo said that review was pending approval by the eThekwini Parks, Recreation, Cemeteries and Culture committee.
He hoped to have it passed by December.
He said the city would not give sports clubs “a blank cheque” by giving them long-term leases without them showing a concrete plan of how they intended to transform and build greater “social cohesion and economic development” around their sites.
“One must remember that we subsidise these clubs - and there are about 40 of them - to the tune of R48 million every year. In terms of the city’s social cohesion programme, ‘what role do these clubs play to promote the coming together of people of different backgrounds through sport and recreational programmes?’.
“Some may need to be reconfigured because they mostly still consist of people from the white community,” he said.
“We demand they show us their development and how they plan to incorporate other communities from the city into their club.”
Sports clubs responded on Wednesday, saying the city’s indecision on what to do with them over the past decade had resulted in many choosing not to upgrade their facilities. “Who would want to invest in assets when you don’t know how long you have on your site?” said David Lindsay, president of the Lahee Park Bowls Club.
“We are living on tenterhooks. We need to maintain our club to ensure we keep on growing the sport but it is a worry having only a month-to-month lease, because at any time they can tell us to pack up and go.”
Trevor Donald, commodore of the Point Yacht club, said the month-to-month leases were a “great concern” to all sports clubs.
“You live with the sword of Damocles hanging over your head all the time as they can do to you what they did to Berea Rovers at any time,” he said.
Rob Honneysett, chairman of Savages athletic club, which has facilities near Berea Rovers, and would also need to vacate its premises for the Liverpool FC academy, said they did not know where they would be relocated to.
DA caucus leader Zwakele Mncwango said the city was being “shortsighted”.
“These clubs are opening up opportunities to the black majority. My problem is that the ANC is not looking at the bigger picture.
“There is no way you can develop sports in disadvantaged communities if you close down clubs who have experience. Giving them long-term leases is the only real way to transfer skills,” Mncwango said.
Daily News