Courting Development

It is getting late, the sun already set. A wind sweeps across the Cape Flats bringing with it the ocean chill. She walks alone through the bushy field, pointed home. Then something moves, stirs in the dark. It frightens, but she has no choice but to push on.

Moments later a young, broken body lies cold and lifeless, alone. A colder man, stinking of rape and murder, creeps away like a ghost into the night.

Morning brings discovery, one that shakes the small community of Heideveld to its core. In particular, sixteen year-old Sadick da Silva is moved to youthful anger by the gruesome murder of his sister’s best friend.

Nellie Court in Manenberg where CFSD held clinics and a street tournament in early 2010.

Field of Dreams: Prisoner's Confederations Cup

The echo comes, reverberating from deep inside. It crashes against thick walls and cold bars as it tries to find its way outside. Deep masculine voices sound as one. Feet stamp down the tune in rhythmic cadence, move as one. Into the earth their message goes, a warning to those they are to face in battle.

“We live together, we die together, a dead man is a dead man. We live together, we die together, a dead man is a dead man.”

They move out of the dark, into the light, away from the solid brick and mortar, past rows of jagged wire, electrified barbs, watching guards, into a tunnel of mesh confinement. The makeshift Egyptian flag held up for the other teams to see.

The drone of a big bus engine is not enough to put them off as it swallows them up. Hands and feet strike roof and floor. The singing continues as they are ferried off, off to the field of dreams.