By Bafana Nzimande
POPULARLY perceived to be Soweto's crime hotspot - and the country's major melting pot of kwaito music - Zola is now to get its first sports complex, worth R1,5-million, courtesy of the City of Johannesburg.
Aimed at changing local mindsets and improving the suburb's image, the complex will give residents access to modern sports facilities.
"This community has always been blessed with talented youngsters, with a majority of them being lost to crime or drugs. Hence the City has decided to establish this complex to keep local youngsters off the streets and to help to change people's perceptions of Zola," said Mandla Mdlalose, Region 6's manager of sports, recreation and aquatics.
Construction is already under way on the complex, which will have a grassed soccer field, two all-weather netball courts, a changing-room block and two combination courts that can be used for volleyball or basketball.
Veli Mtshali, the project's community liaison officer and a Zola resident, said the complex would benefit the community by introducing local youngsters to a variety of sporting codes. It would also help them to acclimatise to grassed soccer fields at a younger age.
"I hope that local youngsters realise how lucky they are to be provided with such opportunities because these are some of the things we, the older generation, only dreamed about - things like playing township soccer on a grassed soccer field or even having a top-class community centre."
Located alongside busy Jabavu Road for easy access to taxi routes, the complex would help to attract more visitors to an area that had been seen as a no-go area by many outsiders, Mtshali said.
Over the years Zola has been associated with high levels of crime, unemployment and violence. Recently it has become the country's breeding ground of musical talent by producing kwaito artists like Mandoza, Brown Dash, Mapaputsi and the multi-talented Bonginkosi Dlamini, popularly as Zola.
"I am very pleased to see that our local government is finally doing something to improve our lives. I hope that this initiative will prove to the world that this community is not only blessed with kwaito musicians, but it also has a variety of sporting talent that only needs guidance," said 21-year-old Zola resident Tshepo Lesiba.
Mdlalose said the sports complex would be used and managed by local residents, with some assistance from Region 6's sports and recreation department. He added that Zola had been earmarked for another multi-purpose indoor complex, to be built in 2006.
"Zola has been disadvantaged for a long time, yet it has managed to put Soweto on world maps in both ways - the good and the bad," Mdlalose said.
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