On 8 August 2023, Prof Ronnie Schloss was interviewed by Mr Thabiso Mosia on his sport show on Radio 2000 regarding the state of stadiums in the country. He rightfully painted a worrying picture about the bad state of stadiums and indicated that this was because of lack of maintenance by municipalities. In the same interview, he referred to Lucas Moripe Stadium.
I was disappointed by comments that he made stating that the game between the Mamelodi Sundowns and Kaizer Chiefs took place at the stadium only because of the renovations done by Mamelodi Sundowns, and that the club did all the renovations instead of the City of Tshwane.
I wish to categorically state that this is factually incorrect and indicate that the City, through the Community and Social Development Services Department, spent over R800 000 in the 2021/22 financial year and R1,5 million in the last financial year (2022/23) to renovate the stadium after we received a letter from PSL informing us that the stadium was banned from hosting their games until those renovations were done. Prof Schloss and the clubs (Mamelodi Sundowns and SuperSport United) were kept up to date with the renovation project right from when the contractor was appointed until the completion of the project.
They were subsequently all invited to the final site inspection where Prof Schloss indicated that he was happy with the work and gave the clubs the go ahead to list the stadium as their venue. However, he highlighted a few items that still needed to be fixed before he could issue the letter of compliance.
The Community and Social Development Services Department indicated that this work would be completed in the current financial year, 2023/24, which only started in July 2023. Given that government procurement processes take long, it was not going to be possible to complete this work before the game between the Mamelodi Sundowns and Kaizer Chiefs. The Mamelodi Sundowns then offered to fix those items and in return the Community and Social Development Services Department would pay for some of the costs of the Joint Operations Committee services that are required when hosting games.
Based on the above facts, I would therefore like to dispute the notion that the Mamelodi Sundowns did all the renovations at the stadium instead of the City. I would also like to thank the club for their proactiveness and indicate that our relationship, including those with other PSL clubs that are based in Tshwane, remains healthy and we value that.
We have admitted before that the state of our sport facilities is not good and that as much as the City is facing financial challenges, we remain committed to ensuring that we maintain them to be at the required standard, and we will continue with that work.