Urban Warriors take Cape Agulhas by storm
Ajax Cape Town were invited to Cape Agulhas this past Saturday to take part in a groundbreaking event, connecting the small community of Agulhas and their sport development programme to a successful, professional club in Ajax CT.
The Cape Agulhas sport development programme contacted Ajax CT, as they intend to learn from the great example that the club set with their wide spread and influential community scheme initiative (CSI).
The club’s Community Scheme use the means of football to reach out to 143 primary schools across Cape Town teaching 7 essential life skills regarding: Nutrition, Safe sex (HIV & Aids prevention), Drugs, Fire safety, Gun safety, Emergency numbers and Smoking, and football skills.
The event consisted of the Ajax CT U/12’s and U/14’s playing the Agulhas U/14’s and U/17’s, a football clinic (instructed by Hans Vonk) and a talk conducted by the Cape club to finish off proceedings.
The talk was presented by the Ajax CT CSI leaders where they emphasized the problem with drug abuse and how it could negatively affect your opportunities in life and the football industry as a whole.
The Cape Agulhas football teams usually play games every Saturday and Sunday, but as this Event and opportunity to build a relationship with Ajax CT presented itself they cancelled all games for the weekend to prepare and insure a great welcoming for the Ajax CT youth teams.
Sibongile Mnguni (sport coordinator) and Mandisi Njoli (advisory to the Major of Cape Agulhas) both run the sport development programme offering six sports (rugby, cricket, football, tennis, netball and hockey) to provide an alternative to drugs for the young children of the community, as they live in the outskirts and lack opportunities.
Both men work in the council of Cape Agulhas and they aim to gather good reports and photos from this successful event to present to their major and council to get more support behind the sport development initiative.
They aim to overcome racial separation and get a good mix of all races playing together in all sporting fronts. They started the football programme this year and have managed to organize 11 teams (10 in the LFA and 1 in the SAB league) starting from the age of U/10 and reaching out to +- 2000 children of the community.
Sibongile Mnguni stated: “I am humbled and very honored to be hosting Ajax CT at our community grounds. This is a great deal and opportunity for us and we hope that this is not the end but just the beginning of a great relationship with Ajax CT, making more trips out here to help us and inspire our community and maybe even adopting us into their CSI program.
“Many of these players really undermine themselves and their skills/abilities so playing against Ajax CT will give them the necessary motivation to keep pushing forward and ignore the many negative peer pressures they receive.”
Mandisi Njoli added “This is a huge deal for our community as we only see Ajax CT on TV; many of the children don’t get the chance to travel to Cape Town so it is an unrealistic thought or possibility for them to meet never mind play against a team such as Ajax CT.
“Hopefully this initiative will help to inspire, influence and motivate our boys to stay off the drugs and concentrate on their football as they see kids of their own age and very similar backgrounds succeeding in the Ajax CT academy.
“I mean scoring a goal and even beating Ajax CT, even if it was a younger age group, is a huge feat for these kids and will take them home to their parents with a great amount of excitement and drive to carry on with our football programme and strive to hopefully be invited to play for Ajax CT one day.”
Results: Cape Agulhas U14 2-1 Ajax CT U12 ; Cape Agulhas U17 4-4 Ajax CT U14
Gregor Whitehead
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