Be like Xolani and roll up your sleeves

Years ago, some cynical old hack coined the term “sunshine journalism” to disparage any sort of positive, or feel-good story… presumably on the basis that real journalism is like cheap crime novels and heavy on the biff, skiet en donder…

And despite what many readers claim, ordinary people tend to pass over articles about people doing good things in favour of blood, guts and gore.

Politicians, of course, will tell us we should be telling those good stories – in other words, those stories which make politicians look good.

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Today, and unapologetically so, we run a story which could be called “sunshine journalism”.

It is the tale of a businessman who, saddened and angered by the decay and neglect of a sports facility in the township where he grew up, decided to take matters into his own hands and, with the help of donors and the community, turned what was once a haven for gangsters and drug dealers into a top-class sports academy.

Xolani Mathumbo did what the Emfuleni council and Gauteng department of sport could not.

Let’s be charitable and allow that these departments did not have a budget for what is, in the broader scheme of municipal life, a small project.

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Mathumbo, instead of bemoaning that fact, decided to do something himself.

And, in doing so, he set an example for the rest of South Africa: If you wait for the government, you’ll die waiting, so roll up your sleeves…

To partially quote the legendary Bob Marley, “none but ourselves” can get the things done which need to be done… and free ourselves from the dependence on a capricious or incompetent government.

Mathumbo is driven by the belief that “a child in sports is a child out of court”. That saying is an inspiration for all of us. He himself is an inspiration.