It is Day 80 in sports fan hell and the more I am stuck here in this place, watching my sports soul slowly shrivel, the more I realize that Cape Town has done [it] wrong.

I am no longer bothered by their blind acceptance of netball, a perverse version of basketball, or their incestuous love of their meat-head Springboks, a second-rate version of real American football-someone put some pads on those guys and tell them to stop nestling each others balls.  My blood no longer boils over the gentlemen’s game of cricket, that I might actually enjoy if I knew half of the 9000 rules that accompany the game (maybe this is why most girls hate football).

My angst is not even centered-around their ability to take something plastically-amazing like the vuvuzela and turn it into something so ridiculous and so western world as the seaweed-based kuduzela … although that does royally piss me off.

The thing that has caught my ire and that Cape Town has done so wrong is found in the Cape Flats on the soccer pitch, but you must first understand a Wikipedia view of history in order to understand the problem and why it upsets me so much.

Excerpts from Wikipedia:

Apartheid-meaning separateness in Afrikaans-was a system of legal racial segregation enforced by the National Party government in South Africa between 1948 and 1994.

The ANC represented the main opposition to the government during apartheid and therefore they played a major role in resolving the conflict through participating in the peacemaking and peace-building processes. Initially intelligence agents of the National Party met in secret with ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela to judge whether conflict resolution was possible.

Following his release from prison on February 11, 1990, Mandela supported reconciliation and negotiation, and helped lead the transition towards multi-racial democracy in South Africa.

Almost all of the communities of the Cape Flats remain, to one degree or another, poverty stricken. Serious social problems include a high rate of unemployment and disturbing levels of gang activity.

That is the Wikipedia view of history, but living at the foot of District Six for two-plus months and spending a fair amount of time on the Cape Flats here is my highly opinionated view of the subject.
The “whiteys” kicked out the “others” to the most deplorable place in the area, the Cape Flats.  Floods are commonplace in the flat lands during the heavy winter rains, and shacks are destroyed by winds that whip around the base of the mountains.  The area has little to offer in the realm of necessities like electricity, water and education.  Thus, it was the perfect place to relocate the undesirables because few people were living there in the first place.

It is too far for most people to head into the business center, which borders District Six, to get the jobs that will pull them out of poverty.  If they can get the jobs, the commute and long hours leave their children unattended and open to trouble and potential gang activity.

The kids who live in these conditions generally accept the conditions as normal and see no need to reach beyond their everyday life, either subconsciously or consciously.
Enter Shamiel Kolbee, a local businessman from the largest township in the Cape Flats, Mitchell’s Plain.  Searching to provide something that he didn’t have as a kid, Kolbee put up his own money to begin a high school soccer league in the heart of the town in which he grew up.  Soon after he launched the 16-team league, Mr. Price, a discount clothing and home goods store, joined in the efforts and formally became a sponsor of the league and purchased uniforms and warms-ups for all the kids that play in the league.

“The plan was to put together a league that was well run, organized and had the best talent in Mitchell’s Plain,” said Kolbee, director of the league.  “We have a great league that is making a difference in the lives of the participants, their families and the neighborhood.”

Al Tregonning, coach of the league leaders and principal of the Beacon Hill school, explained the benefit of the league, “It brought the boys back to school.  There is a problem with truancy and dropouts in this area, and the league offered them an opportunity to come back to school.  They have become so involved with this game they have become disciplined.”

Mr. Price does require disciplined players on the pitch, but what about in the classroom?

Even though the league is run through the school there is no minimum grade requirement for those representing their school by donning its jersey on Saturday mornings.  Besides that, there are no minimum attendance requirements at the school to play in the school league.

I believe that sports make a difference in lives, but what is the difference this league is trying to make?

My most terrifying weeks in high school and college were always the week before my grades were posted.  It always left me worried that I wouldn’t have the grades to keep me participating in sports.  I often wonder what my grades would have been if I wasn’t motivated by my love of sports to achieve at least a minimum grade requirement.

This issue is more complex than just placing minimum academic requirements on soccer players who want to play in the Mr. Price high school league.

The schools in the Cape Flats are often over-crowded, under-managed and under-qualified.  If the players would benefit from the teaching and learning that goes on in the schools of the flats then I would be shouting out for those requirements.  Unfortunately, if you want a quality education in the Cape Flats you have to be rich or white-if you are white, you wouldn’t be living in the flats.

So, a big part of the blame is attributed to those ignorant souls who designed the apartheid system, as if we need another reason to separate ourselves from people that we don’t understand and don’t look like.

Partial blame must also lie at the feet of the ANC who for 15 years of control over South Africa has done very little to level the playing field for the disadvantaged of the Cape Flats.  The electricity remains shoddy, the water suspect and the education system in shambles and the only hope you give the kids of the flats is that they are in the less than one percent that can kick a ball well enough to play themselves out of poverty.

It is hard to blame people who give of their own moneys to give back to their community, but what could have been if Kolbee and Mr. Price decided to focus their efforts on fixing the educational system of the Cape Flats?

And what about the people who give the highest priority to sports?  Are we not to blame also?

No matter where the blame ultimately resides-and I am sure there is enough to go around-the people who always are most affected are the kids.  At the end of the day, I am still stuck in sports fan hell and Cape Town, you’ve done [the kids of the flats] wrong.

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J.David has never won an award for his writing, but he is a former collegiate athlete for a small college where everyone makes the team.  Currently, he is a grad student at the University of Southern California studying the archaic form called, Print Journalism.  J.David played soccer in sixth grade, which basically makes him an expert on the subject, and hated it because of all the running … he played goalie.

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1. ⊚  100 Days in Sports Fan Hell
2. ⊚  Penance to Rescue Me From Sports Fan Hell
3. ⊚  Foreign Reports: Fencing From South Africa
4. ⊚  Long Live the Vuvuzela! At Least For Another Year
5. ⊚  Foreign Reports: Confederations Cup