While Musina Municipality is known countrywide for being the best municipality in the province when it comes to service delivery, local football clubs are accusing the municipality of neglecting the sports facilities in the area.

According to one of the concerned club officials, Mr Gilbert Maloka, the managing director of Musina Classic FC, they were shocked to hear that Musina Local Municipality is the best municipality in the province when it comes to service delivery, while the situation regarding the sports facilities in the area “is pathetic”. He indicated that most of the clubs are using the playing grounds which they are maintaining on their own. He cited the Lesley Manyathela Stadium as the nearest example of that. According to him, his club is currently maintaining the stadium after realizing that the municipality was not doing anything.

Maloka and his friends in the struggle for better sports facilities said that they were surprised to see that their local municipality is reluctant to emulate other municipalities like Thulamela, who boost a number of stadiums and other sports facilities.

In response to the accusations, the spokesperson for the Musina Municipality, Mr Wilson Dzebu, said that like all other rural municipalities, Musina Municipality has a huge backlog when it comes to the provision of sports facilities. Dzebu dismissed as hogwash the accusations that they are leaving the existing sports facilities like the MTD and Lesley Manyathela Stadium to decompose. He revealed that his municipality had put aside an amount of R2 million towards the refurbishment of the MTD Stadium and a further R8,7 million for the renovation of the Lesley Manyathela Stadium in the next financial year.

Dzebu further indicated that, as a rural municipality, they acknowledged the fact that they had limited resources, which he is convinced are being over-utilized. He said that they wouldn’t have produced a soccer star like the late Lesley Manyathela and the current boxing champion, Lovemore Ndou, if there were no facilities at all in the area.