Arcadia’s field of dreams is in peril
Tshwane city plans to demolish the Caledonian Stadium despite it being a heritage site
It is a stadium where a soccer club defied the apartheid regime and helped black players make it into the big league. It’s the home to the Arcadia Shepherds Football Club, but the stadium — parts of which have been declared a heritage site — will soon be demolished to make way for a public park.
City of Tshwane has plans to convert Caledonian Stadium into a “world-class inner-city park”, after identifying the grounds as a place where “an inclusive social hub” could be developed. The spokesperson for the mayor’s office, Blessing Manale, said that plans to build the park have been approved.
“The city has approved the development of a park on the property owned by the city. The final designs have been finalised, and [we have] consulted with all the structures affected by the developers in terms of the applicable legislations,” Manale said.
But Arcadia’s (nicknamed the Arcs) general manager, Lucky Manna, says the park and stadium can coexist.
“We’ve got no opposition to the mayor’s plans for development but you can have your park here and still keep the legacy [of Arcadia]. The people will love you all the more for it,” Manna says.
“These are our people, these are my children out here.”
The football club was established in 1903. The stadium was built in the mid-1950s from the same quarry as Pretoria’s Union Buildings and railway station. It has remained the club’s home ground ever since.
There’s nothing remarkable about the stadium. Plastic black chairs fill the stands and the size of the stadium can’t compare with South Africa’s premier football pitches. The grounds are impeccably clean; their maintenance was paid for directly from Manna’s pocket.
Arcadia was South Africa’s first professional football club and was the first professional soccer team in the country to include black players.
Despite its status as an amateur club, it has produced professional players.
Former Bafana Bafana captain Bongani Khumalo, who scored one of the goals in South Africa’s 2-1 victory against France during the 2010 Fifa World Cup, started training with the team at the age of six.
Thomas Madigage, the assistant Bafana Bafana coach who died in a car accident in 2012, also started his career with Arcadia.
The number of greats who had their first taste of the beautiful game at Caledonian Stadium defies logic, given the odds the club once faced.
Flouting the apartheid era’s segregation laws, the club began training black football players in the 1970s.
They were banned from the stadium in 1974 for having black and white players. They then played soccer in the townships around Arcadia, a suburb in Pretoria, before they returned to the stadium in 1997.
The football club pays an annual fee to use t he council-owned stadium.
According to Manna, the club was in discussions with the City of Tshwane to guarantee the team long-term tenure at the grounds but the city had failed to sign the agreement.
The city needs approval from the Provincial Heritage Resources Authority Gauteng (PHRAG) before it can forge ahead with its plans, because parts of the stadium have been declared heritage sites.
When asked whether the city had a permit to demolish the stadium, Manale said it had to resubmit the heritage impact assessment because it had previously forgone public consultation as required by the Heritage Resources Authority.
“The city resubmitted the heritage impact assessment and engaged with the registered interested and affected parties as per the directive by the PHRAG appeals committee,” Manale confirmed.
It’s still unclear when the demolition will take place, but the city is confident that a park will be built on the site.
Manna, meanwhile, says that while the grounds should be used for social development, it should not come at the cost of the history and legacy of the stadium and football club.
“It’s not only important for our team, but also the youngsters coming through the ranks who know the stories of Arcadia Shepherds and the Caledonian Stadium,” he says.