On January 10, while driving my neighbour’s child, Samkelo, to Woodlands International College for soccer trials at the Seven’s Academy, we took a short detour to the Benoni Northerns Sports Club.

Northerns was hosting a six-a-side fundraising cricket tournament, and I needed to squeeze in a few interviews. What should have been a harmless stopover became a sobering lesson in inequality, exacerbated by the current government and one that no amount of spin can soften.

Samkelo stood quietly by the steel stands, watching men dressed in fairy costumes laughing, joking and enjoying themselves on pristine turf.

A quick glance suggested amusement, but I later learnt his mind was elsewhere. This was not entertainment for him — it was a realisation.

Having spent his entire life playing football on dusty, uneven fields in Tsakane, he had never known that such immaculate, well-maintained sporting facilities existed just a few kilometres from home.

He said he had only ever seen places like this on television, usually in glossy adverts showcasing “upmarket” suburbs.

If that wasn’t enough of a shock, Woodlands delivered another. He stepped onto a neat, immaculate astro-turf field — the kind he had only ever associated with Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.

On the drive back to Tsakane, the questions came thick and fast.

Why don’t we have fields like this where I live? Who decides where facilities go? Why are some areas always clean and others forgotten?

I had answers — painful, uncomfortable answers — but none that could satisfy a teenager grappling with the injustice of it all.

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As we drove past Boksburg Stadium, I was tempted to take him on a tour. Not to inspire him, but to show him decay in real time.

To show him how facilities built in the past and handed over to this government have been allowed to rot into ruins. Not because of incapacity, but because of corruption, neglect and a complete lack of political will.

If a government cannot maintain what already exists, how can it ever be trusted to build and sustain new facilities in townships?

I told him a simple story instead.

Ahead of last year’s G20 summit, the government suddenly found competence. Potholes were patched. Grass was cut. Broken infrastructure was fixed. The state cleaned house — not for its people, but to impress foreign delegates. That alone tells you everything you need to know. The capability exists. The will does not.

Walmsley Park Tennis facility is in shambles. Sinaba Stadium continues to deteriorate. Now the squash courts near PG Park in Boksburg are being stripped for scrap while the municipality looks the other way.

All of this happens as children like Samkelo grow up desperate for safe, functional spaces to play, train and dream. We speak endlessly about crime prevention, youth development and social cohesion, yet we allow the very tools that make those possible to collapse.

Our sports facilities don’t collapse by accident. They collapse because they don’t matter to those in power.

And yes, I know — I’ve been raising this issue since I first started penning this column. It’s starting to feel like I’m stuck on autotune.

But when the song remains the same because the problem never changes, silence is not an option.

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