>From the birth of the idea at a council bosberaad to the frantic finishing touches, the Johannesburg Stadium has been clouded in controversy
ATHLETICS: Julian Drew
THE meeting which launched Johannesburg’s new R97- million athletics stadium last weekend can be pronounced a success judging by the response of the world’s media. Linford Christie’s 9.97 seconds 100m victory and Frankie Fredericks’ similarly quick 19.93 sprint over 200m, both times were the second fastest in the world this year, received wide acclaim overseas.
With world-class athletes brought in for the shorter events and Johannesburg’s 1 750m altitude giving an extra boost to events from 400m down and the horizontal jumps, it was always on the cards that there would be some outstanding performances.
The timing of the meeting at the end of a long, tiring season and the fact that the track was only completed on the morning of competition could have annulled the advantages of the Highveld’s thin air, but in the end the disappointingly small crowd of around 10 000 was treated to some fine athletics. Eight South African all-comers records fell over two days and the sprinters in particular were full of praise for the new track, predicting that the world’s best would seek it out in future for world record attempts.
Such a positive outcome would have been inconceivable just a few days before the meeting when the track was nowhere near complete and council officials were talking of postponing the event until Monday or transferring it to Roodepoort. Had the Pope stayed a little longer in the country he might well have been called upon to confer instant canonisation on those responsible for the turn around, such was the miraculous transformation.
The meeting director, and also Director of Sport for Johannesburg, Danie Malan, who was in Harare last weekend striking last-minute deals, cannot have failed to have noticed the similarities between the enthusiastic mayhem of the All Africa Games and the shambles leading up to his own meeting. Both eventually went ahead and both drew paltry crowds despite being magnificent sporting spectacles.
But for a project that has been clouded in controversy since its inception, it was perhaps inevitable that the stadium opening would not be trouble-free.
The Athletics Stadium was one of 10 projects unveiled in 1993 by the then Johannesburg City Council (JCC) as part of Project City Reveil which was aimed at realising the council’s vision of turning Johannesburg into a world-class city. The project was a bold and laudable plan to revitalise the central business district (CBD) but inevitably, like any multi-faceted concept, contained elements of controversy. The athletics stadium, and to a lesser extent the Light Rail Transit (LRT) system, were at the centre of this controversy when the plan was made public.
Then-management committee member and chairman of the culture and recreation committee, Cecil Bass, said the vision and the 10 projects were formulated in February 1993 by the management committee together with the directors of council departments at a weekend bosberaad in the Magaliesberg. “We don’t believe in planning on an ad hoc basis,” said Bass at the time. “This session was part of a regular process of strategic planning undertaken by the council.”
The 10 projects, which included inner-city housing, grassroots sports facilities, informal trading sites, a trade and tourism convention centre and the Newtown Cultural Precinct, generally received favourable support. But the LRT project, which ignored the recommendations of the more than R5-million Masstran study published by the Department of Transport in 1992 as a blueprint for the city’s public transport until 2010, and the athletics stadium, both drew criticism.
While grassroots sports facilities received widespread approval, the athletics stadium was said to be an expensive facility which would take away funds that could be used for more deserving projects and would place a burden of debt on the future, democratically elected local government.
When the dispute over the need for the stadium was at its height Malan denied being its main motivator at the Magaliesberg bosberaad, saying it was a council decision. In last weekend’s programme, when the stadium was a fait accompli, he came out of the closet and declared that “I proposed the upgrading of the Ellis Park precinct and the building of a world-class stadium.”
While many of the other top 10 projects were put on hold or abandoned the one which generated the most controversy was steamrollered through council in almost obscene haste by a minority local government exercising its last vestiges of hegemony before a new era was ushered in last April. Then-ANC councillor, Clive Gilbert, said that he had never seen another project handled in the same manner as the stadium. “It was the first time in five years that I saw a special section 60 meeting called to push through the tenders for a project,” said Gilbert.
The ANC local and regional government commission for the PWV region issued a statement saying that a decision on the go-ahead for the stadium should only be made once it had had an opportunity to study the proposal and consult all concerned local and regional organisations. It was also perturbed by the haste with which the project was pursued. Not surprisingly, the JCC did not conduct a public involvement campaign until the stadium was half completed.
The stadium was initially sold to the public on the basis of spearheading the city’s bid for the Olympic Games, but it was soon apparent that it would go ahead regardless of the outcome of that bid. Malan,who along with Bass was the main champion for the stadium cause, was at the time also co-chairman of Athletics South Africa Track and Field (ASATF), the sport which will benefit most from the construction of the stadium.
The tender for the design of the stadium drew strong criticism from the Transvaal Institute of Architects with allegations made that several consortiums had prior knowledge of the tender.
The haste with which tenders were called for, and adjudicated, on the contracts for earthworks and piling were also questioned by Gilbert last February. While the time frames involved were not exceptional for a typical fast-track project, the reasons behind it may well have been. “They were trying to push it through before a new dispensation came into being in April,” said Gilbert. “They realised that it would not receive the support of those who represent the majority in Johannesburg.”
Those who supported the stadium seemed quite prepared to risk R12-million of taxpayers’ money on the first phase of the project, obviously hoping that with such a commitment already made, the future Greater Johannesburg Transitional Metropolitan Council would be unwilling to stop the construction process.
A financial feasibility study on the stadium was undertaken by externally appointed consultants, Deloitte and Touche, who concluded that the stadium would cost the taxpayers approximately R1-million a year over the next 25 years in present-day rand values. While this is a relatively small amount to pay for a world-class facility which will benefit thousands of people, Bass bravely declared, “This stadium will not cost the taxpayers of this city one cent.”
Fortunately, having left the council, he no longer has to explain to the good citizens of Johannesburg why the very first event to be staged at the stadium cost the taxpayers R900 000.
In the feasibility study some of the revenue comes from a top local soccer team, believed to be Kaizer Chiefs, which is negotiating to play its home games at the stadium. This is rather like taking money out of one bank account to pay the overdraft at another because according to the editors of South Africa’s two leading soccer magazines there are more than enough soccer stadiums in Johannesburg already.
Professor of Building and Quantity Surveying at the University of the Witwatersrand, Ronnie Schloss, who is also head of the National Soccer League’s stadium committee said, “There are already too many soccer stadiums in Johannesburg and if money was to be spent it should rather have been on upgrading existing facilities. I cannot see a R100-million stadium paying its own way whatever usage they put it to.”
Had it been the sound financial venture Bass claimed it was, there would have been a queue of private investors waiting to put down their money. Alas there were none and the project was passed by council with a caucus block vote and today the stadium is a reality. The revelations earlier this year that the council no longer had control over the stadium after a Section 21 company (not for gain), the Johannesburg Athletics Association (JAA), was formed to run it with, surprisingly enough, Malan and Bass as two of its six directors, did nothing to allay fears that the stadium had more to do with private ambition than the needs of the people of Johannesburg.
Malan has lost his position in Athletics South Africa after losing out in an acrimonious presidential race in April when he declared that he wished to have nothing more to do with the sport. At the weekend he was back where, in reality, he most longs to be, at the centre of the stage, wheeling and dealing in the big money world of international athletics.
Malan has always been a mover and a shaker, albeit to a beat all of his own, but somewhere in the eclectic polyrythms of Africa he seems to find his place.
His stadium had a memorable opening but only time will tell whether it will become an expensive white elephant or a testimony to the foresight of a visionary ahead of his time. Maybe like Stockholm’s D N Galan Grand Prix meeting Johannesburg will one day have its very own DG Malan Grand Prix athletics meeting.