Spinning has popped into the sub-council’s spotlight.
Councillor Norman Adonis from Ward 92 cautioned a Sub-council 12 meeting last month regarding public participation around the Dolomites sports field in Tafelsig because illegal spinning was taking place there.
“They have been using that space illegally and now we hear that they are going to have public participation and then the public participation office is not even going to listen to what we as councillors are saying,” he said.
“We already have issues around the sportsfield,” Adonis said. “Residents are complaining that they do not want the spinning. On a Monday morning that clinic is full because of asthma attacks and chest problems, just because of what is happening around that space.”
Adonis claims that the spinning clubs had moved to Dolomites after they were kicked out of Lentegeur.
Sub-council chair Solomon Philander reminded the councillor that they were not gatekeepers.
“When they apply they must go through the proper channels,” he said.
He said that spinning clubs had breached their contracts with the City.
“We are not against the spinning but there is a responsibility on their end,” Philander said. “They had a very terrible event where all the by-laws were broken. They were then no longer allowed to use the field in Lentegeur.”
A neighbour of the Dolomites field said the community is divided about the spinning, or popping, as it is known.
He said people didn’t like the smoke but at the same time the children loved it and there was not enough activities to keep the children busy in the area.
“The cemeteries are full of children who became gangsters and were killed,” he said, adding that the spinning events could also provide trading and business opportunities if done well.
Jonathan Schaffers, founder of Supporting People In Need (Spin), said that the City had set him up for failure when it gave him a lease at Lentegeur Sports Field.
Schaffer said the field, which is badly neglected, has no access control and Schaffers’ agreement capped entry at 200 people.
“No other codes that use the field have a cap,” Schaffers said.
Schaffers started the spinning club six years ago, after a friend’s daughter was raped there. Since then he has spent hundreds of thousands of rands of his own money to secure the field.
He said the purpose had been twofold, as crime prevention and recreation. He said that if the field was being used to entertain the community then gang activity could not take place there too.
“They spend a lot of money on tracks at Killarney which our children can’t reach,” he said.
Schaffers said that City’s bylaws are out of touch with some areas of the Cape Flats.
“We elected those councillors to advocate for us but instead they work against us. Those by-laws may work in Camps Bay but they don’t work here.”
Schaffers said his club was not active at Dolomites but was networked with all the other spinning clubs in Mitchell’s Plain.
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