By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
On April 11, 2001, an event that is usually South Africa’s greatest celebration of its local football, the Soweto derby, turned to tragedy as 43 Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates supporters lost their lives in a crowd stampede at Ellis Park.
The stadium has a capacity of 60,000 but eyewitnesses said there were many thousands more inside the ground. A police spokesman put the figure at 120,000. In addition, about 60,000 people were still outside the stadium as the match started.
Most of the deaths occurred when the waiting crowd rushed the gate. Fans interviewed after the tragedy condemned the clubs’ attitude to safety, accusing them of being more interested in tickets than safety of the spectators.
The police were also blamed for not keeping order outside the stadium. Forty-two people were killed in 1991at Orkney during another match between the Pirates and the Chiefs.
The Ellis Park disaster, as it has become known, was 20 years ago to the day on Sunday, and Kaizer Chiefs’ chairman Kaizer Motaung shared memories of a day forever etched as a scar on the soul of the beautiful game in South Africa.
People had gathered to come and witness a beautiful game of football … all expectations were very high for this game. It was a beautiful evening and all was going well. Once the game started, where I was seated, I could see there was some commotion taking place in one part of the stadium, that corner, and it ultimately resulted in the stoppage of the match, Motaung recalled.
Security called on the board to come and attend to the situation, where there was a stampede as a result of people trying to force their way into the stadium. It is very sad that this beautiful day turned out to be a very sad day … many people died and many were injured and those of us who were there will always remember this day …. this was a very dark day for South African football, but from this event as football we have learned a lot of lessons from this unfortunate occurrence, said Motaung.
From this event itself I think as football we’ve learnt quite a lot of lessons and done many things emanating from the unfortunate occurrence of this fateful day. We had to change a lot of things and make sure in future we don’t again experience an event of this nature any more. The lessons learnt from that game have actually accelerated us into ensuring the lives of people must be prioritized when we have such big events. And hence to this day we have not had any event that could have triggered something of this nature, added Motaung.
“A lot of things had to change to make sure in future we didn’t experience and event of this nature again.”
This day belongs to the bereaved families and those that got injured, we wish them strength, said Kaizer Chiefs chairman.