There’s still some inequality in an equal society

In my youth, I spent much of my time devouring reports on athletics events which took place before I was born. There’s something mystical about turning back the clock, and thanks to old magazines and books, my interest in the sport started not in the 1990s but in the 70s.

Eager to learn more about previous generations, I searched for further content on the sport before the isolation era, but I found the more I wound back the clock, the more it shifted from a deep shade of multi-coloured success to a depressing tone of dull white.

In 1904, two men working at an exhibit at the St Louis Stock Exchange became the first South Africans to compete in the Olympic Games, albeit without an official SA team.

Len Tau finished ninth and Jan Mashiani ended 12th in the marathon race, signalling the nation’s potential in distance running events.

We had to wait a long time, however, for black athletes to take any form of spotlight again.

Reports from the 80s show how much the tide had turned following the political uprising in the previous decade, and by the time I was born, the sport began to reflect the demographics of our nation.

The likes of Matthews Temane, Zithulele Sinqe and Xolile Yawa would have been among the best road runners in the world, had they been given the chance, but unlike their predecessors, they did at least get an opportunity to shine at home.

Wind the clock back to the 60s and reports might give the false impression that South Africa was a European country.

When I asked local statisticians why we don’t mention many black athletes when we talk about the country’s top distance runners who graced our tracks both during and before isolation, the response and lack of interest was disappointing.

For a couple of years I volunteered as editor of the SA Athletics Annual, which keeps records of results and performances of local events.

When I suggested to the committee that we include a Zulu article in the edition on which we were working, I was shot down quicker than I could stand up. The reason? I was told we would chase away their loyal readers if we attempted to deviate from English and Afrikaans.

By sticking to an ancient formula, they hoped to retain 800- odd sales of the book each year. They seemed to have no grasp of the fact that Zulu articles could extend their reach significantly and they could sell far more books by addressing readers in the country’s widest-spoken language.

There have been some attempts to collect information on athletes who competed in previously disadvantaged areas in the first half of the 20th Century, but being banished from events limited to white athletes ensured there was very little media coverage or interest in their performances.

That information can be gathered, and the inevitably long list of world-class athletes whose names many of us have never heard could receive belated recognition.

But we still don’t have sufficient records of what athletes of colour achieved during one of the darkest of periods in our nation’s history.

The sport of athletics may have achieved equality on the track and the road, but the same equality has not been achieved at other levels.

The entire national statistics committee consists of white men. Not one person of colour is involved, and not one woman.

Not that there is anything wrong with being a white man, but in a country in which they (yes, we) make up less than five percent of the population, it is ludicrous that they (we) have retained a monopoly in any area of the sport.

And when those same white men make concerted efforts to retain the status quo, it helps nobody else.

Our country’s political past cannot be used as an excuse for not correcting our mistakes, but in order to offer belated recognition where it’s due, we need to ensure the people in control want to fix the problem in the first place.