Sport in SA has a long and proud history of fighting oppression

“If our governments remain rooted in the industrial age, their decline in relevance is only likely to accelerate. Most government structures and processes date back earlier than the 1950s,” warned Sunil Johal in theconversation.com.

The USA is usually ranked in the top five most innovative countries – with the Scandinavian countries, Israel and Singapore.

“In the US, we have a lot of attitude to break the rules because our whole government was founded on rule-breaking back in the mid1700s. It’s engrained in us to go against the flow,” wrote Chicagobased lawyer Charles A Krugel.

The same could be said of South Africa – its history of courage and the triumph of the human spirit.

Tragically, these proud, defiant national strengths have for a decade been domineered by evil. The real cost of grand corruption was not only the trillion rand looted, but the opportunity cost. Instead of advancing 10 years, the captured hyena state dragged us 10 years back.

Which means we’re actually now two decades behind – in the ’90s. Back to square one.

This time the government will need to start by challenging itself. Or fade into irrelevance. I WRITE this article with much nostalgia. The oppressed in South Africa have a proud history of fighting oppression since the arrival of the Dutch settlers in 1652.

In all spheres of life the oppressed have had to do battle with the master-slave ideas and practical implementation of this philosophy of the colonisers. In the field of sport, in the late 1950s when sport was forced by the colonisers to be played on a racial basis, the oppressed realised they could organise themselves in a non-racial manner to force change upon the colonisers.

The non-racial SA Senior School Sports Association and the nonracial South African Primary School Sports Association were formed in the 1960s. These two bodies made participation in sport on a non-racial basis possible and challenged the hegemony of the colonisers.

This new wave of thinking permeated the oppressed with the formation of various non-racial sports bodies from the 1960s onwards, with the culmination of an overarching non-racial sports body, the SA Council on Sport (Sacos) in the early 1970s. Its slogan was “No normal sport in an abnormal society”.

In 1994, non-racial sports bodies were formed, with an amalgamation of the racist sport bodies and the non-racial sport bodies.

The once-powerful Sacos came to an end with the arrival of a new political set-up, from which nonracial sport never recovered.

I needed to give this introduction for those were not aware of the sport struggle in South Africa before 1994.

Former Sacos president Frank van der Horst never succumbed to the unity sham of opportunists in 1994 which set back the struggle for true non-racial sport. On the contrary, he is still involved in the struggle and should be applauded for his lifelong battle for a free and just South Africa.

In the Western Cape, as elsewhere in the country, athletics flourished in the provincial and national bodies of schools of the oppressed.

I want to write about the achievements of schools in the Western Cape in the field of nonracial athletics.

The Western Province Senior School Sports Union (WPSSSU) started in the early 1960s.

The organisation provided topclass athletics competition for the schools of the oppressed and poor.

In the early 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, schools such as South Peninsula High, Athlone, Livingstone and Alexander dominated the A section athletics.

In the latter part of the 1980s, Belgravia High School dominated.

The Mitchells Plain schools came into prominence in the 1990s, with schools such as Mondale High and Spine Road dominating.

Sadly, from 1994, schools in the Western Cape were divided into five regional zones and competed for their zones, not the schools under a new school organisation, the United School Sports Association of SA.

Athletics in schools declined with the formation of this body.

It eventually folded in 2015, with a new body being formed. This body is so irrelevant that many of the schools do not even know the name of the organisation.

However, one good thing has happened since last year: the top schools from the five regions participate in a Super Athletics competition.

Mondale High School won this competition last year, with Bernadino Heights High placed second.

Tomorrow at the Bellville stadium, South Peninsula High makes its debut in the Super Athletics competition.

Being a former student and teacher at the school, I know how seriously the school takes its athletics.

From an absence of 34 years from the A Section athletics, it has made a return to the top flight.

The point I want to make – and it applies to all spheres of life – is: never give up. At the end of the road, if you don’t give up, victory awaits you. May the best school win the Super Athletics competition and may the atmosphere match the Champion of Champions athletics competition organised by the nonracial WPSSSU from 1960s to 1994. Memory is the weapon. The real cost of corruption was not the trillion rand looted, but the opportunity cost. Instead of advancing 10 years, the captured state dragged us 10 years back