By Chris Totobela
Netball was once one of the major sporting codes in Makhanda, with a huge following.
However, in recent years, the sport appears to have taken a serious knock. After years of trying to get Makana Netball executive committee members to shed light on the status of netball in Makhanda, one member finally broke the silence, and agreed to sit down with Grocott’s Mail.
Ziphozihle Nkomonde served as a development officer for Makana Netball and is currently the manager/coach of Jacaranda Aces.
Nkomonde spoke candidly about the “cause of death” of netball in Makhanda. He pointed to various factors that could be attributed to the downfall of what used to be one of the largely followed sporting code.
“I think the problem started when the new structure was elected as all of the executive committee members came from one club. I was the only male elected in the structure, who also came from a different club. One of the major blunders that was made on the day by netball people was to elect somebody who does not really know the situation in the township to lead netball.
“I think it was in 2018 when the late Jeff Budaza attended one of our executive meetings and gave us permission to use the Indoor Sport Centre as the home of netball for our fixtures, but not a single game was ever played there. All the games were always played at Rhodes University and it was extremely difficult for township teams to attend those games as most of those games were played in the evening.
“We played the league and never got to finish it and this happened for six consecutive years and we were always asked to affiliate the following year even though we did not finish the previous season. Junior netball teams were abolished and junior players were told to go and play school netball and to me that was not the correct way to develop netball in Makhanda as not all junior players play for their respective school teams.”
Nkomonde also cited infighting amongst executive committee members as one of the major problems.” There was a lot of personal squabbles and wars which I do not know where they originated from. We got our share of money from the Mayoral Cup competition and it was a lot of money, but teams only played for a mere R2000. We also received money from the National Lottery as well, which was a huge sum but we still played for a mere R3000 for girls and R2000 for males and we still do not know what happened to the rest of the money. We are still waiting for those in charge to call us and give us the financial statement.
“There are so many stories that I would not like to talk about here about what happened to the rest of the money and it would only be fair for the executive committee to call all clubs and the netball community and bring us to speed as to what happened to the money and why the league is no longer taking place.”
Nkomonde said he would like any of the executive committee members to come forward and give them answers as he claims not to know the last time a meeting was held.
He also came up with a proposal to move forward from this dilemma. “I will personally call a meeting with all existing netball clubs and set up an interim structure that will help bring back local netball to life as young girls are suffering and their talent is being wasted. I will try my best to make sure that netball is being played again in Makhanda and will also make sure that someone is held accountable if any of the Makana Netball funds were misused.”
Nkomonde hoped the report would go a long way in helping resuscitate the sport.
“This is a very sad story of our netball and hope that netball people will get together and try and revive the sport. We also once again appeal to Makana Netball executive committee members to come forward as we have in the past tried so many times to give them the platform to tell our readers about what happened to local netball but that was all in vain.”
