Long awaited Helenvale sportsfields project completed – NMBM

Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Portfolio Head for Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture, Cllr Helga van Staaden today welcomed the completion and official hand over of the new Helenvale Sportfields by the Mandela Bay Development Agency.

The long awaited project will see up and coming sports stars from the community using the high-quality sports fields as training and playing ground.

During the handover event, MMC van Staaden said the R10million completed facility would need community ownership in order to benefit generations to come.

“The secret to having good standing facilities is ownership from the communities using the facilities. When a community takes ownership of its facilities they will look after what belongs to them. Everyone who has spoken here today has touched on the importance of ownership. The facility belongs to everyone, it can’t just be for a specific code making use of it. We must find ways to coexist and it is for every sporting code to take ownership of this facility because we can’t allow a situation where this facility will become another Finnis Street Stadium, NU2 Stadium and all the other vandalised facilities.”

“When I listened to the community members from this community talking here, I knew that we can trust this community to look after what has been given to them. It was given to them by a caring government. As parents we’ll need to ensure that this facility is not ruined by our children or anyone else for that matter because this should be an inheritance for generations to come. We are a City that is serious about sports development and we want to use it to take our children away from drugs and crime,” Cllr van Staaden said.

MBDA’s Chief Executive Officer, Ashraf Adam said the idea behind the development was to invest in the community by improving infrastructure leading up to safety and peace and to prevent violence.

“We focused on the safety and peace and engaged with different stakeholders and got them to take responsibility for the development,” he said.

Edmund Barendse from the Helenvale Rugby Club said: “Our children will now play in secure sportfields, this will help them to get away from the streets and rather come play here. This will help them get away from gangsterism because that is the problem we have in Helenvale, it’s our kids joining these gangs because they don’t have playing fields but now they will enjoy playing in this facility of Helenvale.”

The completed work includes:

New boundary fencing

Construction of new change rooms

Construction of new pavilions

Rugby/soccer combination posts and;

Grassing and topsoil to new and existing fields.

With the facility now under the management and ownership of NMBM, the process to establish the facility management committee is underway.