William Gumede:
The Olympic Games in Tokyo have been a somewhat convenient, if enjoyable, distraction to the seismic tremors that have been taking place in this country. We have marvelled at the endurance, the commitment, the accomplishments, the feats and the tears of both absolute joy and utter despair of athletes of all shapes and colours from all corners of the globe. The world has truly come together in celebration. For the participants, it’s a dream come true, the pinnacle of their careers.
Many South Africans woke up in the wee hours of the morning a week ago to witness with total rapture Tatjana Schoenmaker powering her way to a gold medal in the 200m breaststroke, smashing the world record in the process. Some were hearing of her for the first time and couldn’t quite wrap their tongues around her name, but they celebrated nonetheless. She was representing us — and that’s all that mattered. Crying with joy on that podium as the national anthem played, thousands around the country must have shed tears with her. It was goosebump stuff.
It was almost as if it could be replayed many times over. But for that to happen, we have to start winning more medals. Schoenmaker is a star that shines brightly in an otherwise gloomy picture of poor results. For SA, moaning about our meagre harvests at these games has almost become regular fare. It’s not as if we aren’t aware of the important role sport plays in uniting societies. Nelson Mandela said sport “has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to the youth in a language they understand. Sports can create hope where there was only despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all types of discrimination.”
Sport has played a huge role in our history. Apartheid eschewed all racial mixing and demanded that the different “nations” play among themselves. It was when sport isolation began to bite that supporters of apartheid had second thoughts and the system began to crumble.
Once a new government was in place, we took to international sport like ducks to water. We hosted the Rugby World Cup and won it against all odds. Then we hosted and won the Africa Cup of Nations. The Cricket World Cup was a bit of a debacle. It turned out we couldn’t count. But we hosted a great party all the same. We could even have hosted the Olympics had it not been for envious African IOC delegates who accepted our bribes but voted for Athens. However, successfully hosting the 2010 Fifa World Cup soccer tournament became the icing on the cake.
Since then, however, our sport, like our politics, has gone south. The problem may be the fact that success came too soon. We just didn’t think we had to work too hard to achieve it. We got spoilt. We thought we were exceptional. Also, although we hosted a lot of tournaments, we didn’t use those opportunities to hone or improve the standard of our athletes or teams. Simply playing host — and basking in global adulation — seems to have been the overriding aim. But that alone doesn’t win medals.
As we watch other nations excelling at the Olympics, one wonders what goes through our sports administrators’ and politicians’ minds. I’m sure they have a ready excuse why a country like Australia with half our population is punching way above its weight. What about Jamaica with a population of under 3-million? And Cuba, with 11million? Despite the inequalities, SA still has far better facilities and infrastructure than many of its competitors, and should be producing much better results. Much that handicaps our athletes is political. We want to see transformation at the top without tending to it at the base. We want to pick the fruit without first planting and nurturing the tree. We should make sure talent is spotted and nurtured at school level, not at the top. It’s no coincidence for instance that most black professional players in rugby and cricket come from private schools. They have access to better facilities. There’s therefore no need for a minister of sport (what does he do all day?). What we need is a deputy minister in the education department whose sole responsibility is to make sure all schools have adequate sports facilities. It’s fruitless to complain about lack of transformation in our professional teams while we do absolutely nothing to nurture talent at the bottom. Sport should not be treated as an afterthought. It should be an integral part of our education system, to develop a whole human being.
We also want to choose which sport are acceptable. Former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, for instance, was prevailed upon by the EFF to scrap bicycle lanes because cycling was deemed to be an elite or white sport. Do these revolutionaries know that it’s an Olympic sport? Or do they just not care? Instead of shunning certain types of sport, we should be getting more kids from poor backgrounds involved.
There’s also no agreed or coherent national strategy or template. Transformation seems to be the mantra and the panacea. While sports men and women want to play sport, the politicians are intent on playing politics — and it’s their word that often prevails. For instance, sports minister Nathi Mthethwa seemed to pour cold water on the feel-good following Schoenmaker’s victory by suggesting Team SA was not representative enough, as if representivity alone would win us more medals. In international sport it is your passport, not your colour, that counts; and it’s the medal, not the model, that matters ultimately.
The Olympics are the absolute pinnacle in any sports person’s career. As one athlete waving his treasured gold medal put it: “If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.” We should therefore grant all young people every opportunity to achieve their dreams. And that would also do the country — and its future — a world of good.