Young people from Gugulethu and the surrounding communities celebrated Easter in style by taking part in the Easter Weekend Festival.
While millions across the country used the weekend to praise and worship the Lord, young people opted to engage in sporting activities such as soccer, netball, karate, boxing, cricket and chess as part of the three day event. The festival kicked off on Friday 15 April and continued until Monday 18 April.
Both soccer and netball featured u-12, u-14, u-16 as well as senior teams.
Raymond Pienaar, festival committee organiser, said the event was organised by the Gugulethu Sports Council to revive and unite all sporting codes in Gugulethu.
The festival was the first since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We used to do it before, but we’d last had it in 2019 due to Covid-19,” Pienaar said. “Our plan is to do it annually depending if we get enough sponsors. We were impressed by the turnout. Both the spectators and the teams participated in the festival hoping that the next event will be big.”
He said the organisers’ intention is to encourage young people to be involved in sport.
“Not all the children are good at academics. By organising these kinds of events we are trying to instil discipline in them and encourage them to stay positive. They must know that there are people who are breadwinners through sport.”
Pienaar lashed out at the lack of sports facilities in communities. He said the festival was a success because of the involvement of local councillors and the City of Cape Town.
“For example, the boxing ring we borrowed from Nyanga. We also engaged local schools to allow us to use their sports grounds. We are also lacking equipment for boxing, cricket and other sporting codes.”
Pienaar urged local business owners to support the sports festival in future.
Lumka Thomas, coach of Nkanyamba netball team from Nyanga, said the tournament was exciting. She said it was the first time her team took part in the festival.
“Our senior team won the final beating the Elite Netball team from Gugulethu 36-35,” said Thomas. “And also u-14 won 14-12 beating Heartless netball team also from Gugulethu. It was hectic but we were prepared because we knew it was not going to be easy.”
She described the festival as a platform to showcase young talent. She said among its aims is to groom netball players from the townships.
Thomas expressed her gratitude to the festival’s supporters and urged them to keep on supporting it.