EDITOR – In 1996 Bafana Bafana won the Africa Cup of Nations and were ranked 16th in the world. Today, after years of serial neglect by the football administrators, we are ranked 69th in the world and 18th in Africa behind many countries with extremely limited resources. By contrast, a country like Zambia lost its entire team in an air crash in 1993, yet they were runners up in Africa in 1994 and third in 1996 and won in 2012.
So given the fact that we can afford to donate $10 million (over R131 million) to Caribbean football, and entrust the money to a known corrupt official, now we learn Durban is to get a new football academy on the Stables site, and while we accept that this sort of football development is long overdue, how our city has gone about implementing this leaves a lot to be desired.
Save Our Berea has a simple philosophy. We ask the city to listen to the people and in everything it does, to abide by the Constitution and the laws of our country. That should be fairly simple, but seemingly not, given the attitude of our City Manager and our council.
Tenants that have occupied the chosen site for years are treated with contempt and given 30 days’ notice in terms of their monthly leases. The city claims it has the legal right to do this but what happened to its goal of becoming Africa’s most caring city within 15 years?
Given our Constitutional right to information and the fact that taxpayers are footing the bill, not only are we excluded from the process but we also have no knowledge of the ability of the people behind the project. Neither do we have real knowledge whether the financial contribution by taxpayers is justified. But that does not stop the City Manager from arrogantly saying that nothing will stop this project, and so yet again a legal challenge is on the cards.
When the decision was taken by the City Council to lease the land to the owners of this new Sports Academy in October last year, the adopted resolution instructed the City Manager to advertise for objections. Was that ever done? It went on to say that in the event of objections to the proposed lease, the matter be submitted to the City Manager in terms of provisions for the resolution of disputes, objection, complaints and queries provided for in the Supply Chain Management Policy.
Were objections received? Were the existing tenants ever made aware timeously of the plans to evict them in order for them to object if they so wished? The resolution also instructed the City Manager to issue notices to terminate the existing leases but qualified this by mandating him to continue with consultation with the parties affected by the development of the Sports Academy. Tenants claimed that the first they knew of it was when they received a 30 day notice to vacate.
Surprisingly the CEO of the new Sports Academy attempted to negotiate with the existing tenants, but was he even mandated to do this and if so, who gave him the legal right to negotiate on behalf of the city?
Award winning architect, Don Albert designer of eThekwini’s iconic Millennium Tower said that the eThekwini Municipality, has an ‘almost fascist’ attitude to planning and public consultation. “One wonders why it is so hard for the City to do what is right … We need to revert to a planning culture of genuine democracy, as opposed to one of foregone conclusions, litigation, crisis management, “blacklisting’ and spin.”
Kevin Dunkley
Cheryl Johnson
Save Our Berea
