Renaming stadium after Olympics athlete inappropriate
Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille is faux pas prone. She appointed coyly termed "poo protestor" – or more accurately, “shit-troopers” (apologies to Star Wars) – Loyiso Nkohla as an executive support officer to Ernest Sonnenberg at a R700 000 a year salary to the amazement of citizens and her own party. Now, rightly so, the DA wants to "flush him away” – reverse his appointment – because it was improper, irrational and counter its principles.
She allegedly went to bat for millionaire developer acquaintances and supported their controversial plans in Clifton, ignoring concerns of a conflict of interest.
Now, there is Western Cape’s Premier Helen Zille and the DA’s proposal to rename the Green Point Athletics Stadium after Olympic gold medallist Wayde van Niekerk. De Lille was interviewed on SABC TV news October 17 and said: "There will be public participation, and next February the stadium [will] be renamed after Wayde van Niekerk".
According to Sport24 De Lille said: “It needs public participation to ensure the proposal is accepted. Thereafter, the naming committee will make a recommendation to me, based on the outcome of the public participation process. If the majority of councillors are in agreement, they will vote to pass the renaming.”
However, her short statement to SABC and the way they reported it and Van Niekerk’s response indicate it’s fait accompli. From SABC’s live blog:
SABC Sport anchor: “And the news [Van Niekerk] was to have a stadium named after him:
Van Niekerk’s response: “It was a massive honour ... to have the opportunity to get this stadium named after me, I thank everyone.”
De Lille and the city have prejudiced the public participation process that has not yet begun. I don’t believe SABC and Van Niekerk misunderstood that renaming the stadium is subject to citizens deliberating and deciding first – they reported and he accepted it as if it was decided fact. De Lille and DA have already decided, irrespective of what the majority view of the city's residents might be. The news comes a month after Zille made the proposal, and was announced at the same time as a city event honouring Rio Olympics athletes.
There was a similar situation last year with UCT's pro forma public participation process over the Rhodes statue, a pointless and dishonest exercise because both UCT and Heritage Western Cape had pre-emptively decided the outcome and UCT had already been given permission to move the statue. (The eventual decision was to move the statue elsewhere on campus, but it remains in storage.)
Van Niekerk (24) may be an admirable athlete and person, and I wish him well. But it's inappropriate to name a facility, etc after, or bestow a similar honour on, one who is at the start of and who has yet to prove himself over the course of a hopefully long and successful career.
Because we have so few heroes and role models there is a tendency to get excited and prematurely idolise the few who do shine, even if briefly, only to be disappointed or neglect them or their memory when either they do not live up to expectations or disappoint. Then, the public turns against them with a vengeance – the highs when our teams do well that turns into anger and derision when they fail, e.g., the vicissitudes of the national rugby, football and cricket teams, and fallen sporting legends.
Generally, public honours and awards are made after years or a lifetime’s hard work and achievement. If it’s done at all, it’s done then to ensure the proposed recipient is worthy and showed consistency and commitment to his work, and reward him or her for that dedication to excellence.
Or it’s done to honour an extraordinary or once-in-a-lifetime feat. Importantly, the honour is a reflection on the person, and will not be made if there is a blemish on his or her character, in personal life or career[1].
Without detracting from Van Niekerk’s Olympics win, something other South African athletes have also achieved, we don’t know what the future holds for him personally and professionally.
The Olympics 2016 was the first he participated in. His career started in 2011, but he fully emerged in 2013. Since then he has shown promise. He won gold at the World Championships in Beijing 2015, silver at Commonwealth Games in 2014, and two gold medals and silver at the African Games in 2016 and 2014 respectively. His career is only starting.
We know the DA-run city does not, and will not, abide any outcome that does not align with its own political or private agendas and views. We see this with development proposals and the business plan option for the Cape Town Stadium it pushed through despite public opposition.
Similarly, there is a lack of transparency with renaming roads regarding how and what names were proposed and the process used to decide the names that were eventually chosen. In 2012 the late Dullah Omar’s family objected to the city’s proposal to rename Vanguard Drive “Dullah Omar Drive”. They wanted Jan Smuts Drive to be renamed after him. Part of Lansdowne Road was renamed “Imam Haron” despite, I understand, substantial objections to that too.
Despite meaningful public participation being a requirement of the constitution and Municipal Systems Act, the city is under no obligation to adhere to public consensus. I don’t understand its purpose then.
Ultimately, the city’s decision – we may accept it as fait accompli – to rename the Green Point stadium is an opportunistic, political move intended to ingratiate the DA – not city – with Van Niekerk, the athletics loving public and community and Cape Town’s brown population. Of course, it would be churlish of Van Niekerk to reject the proposal – he said he was honoured, which as a gentleman and sportsman he would graciously say. His public position is understandable.
Because the public participation process has not begun, I don’t know what the people of Cape Town will say. It would be untenable for De Lille, Zille, DA and city council if residents reject the proposal, object to it or suggest other names, if the latter were posed as an option they might consider (it won’t). It would be huge humiliation for the DA et al, and especially Van Niekerk, if the proposal was rejected. So De Lille and city can’t let this happen.
So the process to rename the stadium the “Wayde van Niekerk Athletics Stadium” will be stage managed like the questionable and discredited public participation processes for Rhodes statue (that was not the city’s, but UCT’s), Cape Town Stadium’s business plan and various ongoing, city-wide developments.
Zille and De Lille are particularly self-serving, capricious and arrogant politicians motivated by attention-seeking and personal glory. In other circumstances, naming a public facility after a living person is singularly praiseworthy for the grantor and a significant honour for the beneficiary. It’s almost unheard of to name it after one so young and relatively untested in his occupation as Van Niekerk is. But coming from a questionable political space and source, there is nothing commendable about this case. The DA and city have placed a great burden, and honour, on Van Niekerk. I hope he lives up to it.
[1] Endnote: Strathclyde University, Scotland awarded Olympian Oscar Pistorius, then 25, an honorary doctorate in 2012 for “outstanding sporting success”. The university stripped him of the degree four months after he was jailed for killing Reeva Steenkamp.
