GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD City of Cape Town Mayoral Candidate
22 September 2026
Documents obtained from the City of Cape Town under the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) confirm that the City’s Sport Asset Management Policy, launched with much fanfare in 2022, has effectively been abandoned.
What this means is that the City is turning its back on its community development functions.
The documents corroborate my own observations over the past month when, at the invitation of various sporting administrators and communities, I have visited City-owned sports facilities across the Metro.
The pattern on the ground is stark and consistent. In wealthier, well-located communities, sports facilities are generally in decent condition. In poorer communities, maintenance is often non-existent, with community members left to cut grass, mark lines, fix nets and keep basic infrastructure intact.
The pattern mirrors that of children’s playparks where child safety is prioritised through the appropriate maintenance of equipment and the provision of rubber mats – depending on location.
The City is neither building new public facilities at pace, nor looking after what it already has.
Decently maintained public facilities, with structured programmes for their use, should be a key element in the City’s strategy to provide viable alternatives for young and unemployed people to gangsterism and other forms of anti-social behaviour.
Empty, broken fields are not just missed opportunities – on the City’s own evidence neglected facilities become part of the same problems they were meant to address.
My visits to a number of these facilities, mostly soccer fields, led to my submitting a PAIA application for the City’s compliance records – its categorisation register, maintenance performance records, and records of the sport development programmes the policy requires.
What PAIA revealed
The City’s Deputy Information Officer responded under a sworn affidavit, dated 16 September 2026, confirming that key records simply do not exist.
- No facility-by-facility categorisation register, despite this being the policy’s core planning tool.
- No records of whether the City, or any sports committee, is meeting the policy’s “minimum standards of maintenance” – because no measurable standard was ever defined.
- No formal records of sport development programmes at any City sports facility. Clubs run their own programmes, entirely unmonitored and unsupported by the City.
- No records of club funding, donated facility improvements, or club membership reporting – as the policy requires.
The Community Services and Health Portfolio Committee’s minutes further reveal a remarkable level of ineptitude and/or disinterest.
In September 2023, Councillor Francine Higham – then an oversight councillor on the committee – asked for a full register of City sports properties, their lease status and maintenance condition.
The Committee resolved this be provided by November 2023. It apparently never was, because in August 2024 Higham had to ask for almost the identical thing again.
On 23 January 2025, Higham was appointed Mayoral Committee Member for Community Services and Health – the political head of the
very department responsible for producing exactly the register she had twice asked for as a councillor.
She has now held that position for well over a year. The affidavit I’ve obtained, dated September 2026, confirms that register still does not exist.
Councillor Higham correctly identified this failure before she had the power to fix it. She has since had that power, and it remains unfixed.
The reports confirm that there are no City-run sport development, after-school or holiday programmes at its facilities. This matters enormously. It speaks directly to the community development function the City is supposed to be performing – but by its own paper trail, isn’t.
The GOOD Solution
My One Standard City policy – part of the GOOD Cape Town Six Pledges announced this weekend – sets out the fix:
- The City resumes direct responsibility for baseline maintenance of every sport and recreation facility regardless of the income profile of the surrounding community. No more communities left to fund the City’s job themselves.
- The current categorisation system, which ties City-funded maintenance to a community’s own ability to pay, is scrapped in favour of one enforced standard, applied equally, everywhere.
- City-run holiday and after-school recreation programmes, prioritised for the communities where the alternative to organised sport is exposure to violence.
- A published, ward-level maintenance backlog register and an annual public compliance report – the transparency the City’s existing policy already promises, but has never delivered.
Media Enquiries: media@forgood.org.za