Attempts to integrate other population groups fairly into South Africa’s Cricket and Rugby national teams have been frustrated since Democracy dawned, this has happened at the sports' Administrative level down to Coaching level and even at Fan level. When transformation of these teams is suggested you hear cries of "leave our sports alone!”, this is even expressed when Black, Indian, and Coloured Rugby fans try to go to stadiums to lend their support and enjoy the sports they love.
All we hear is cries of "interference", "not selected on merit", "quotas", "Kevin Pietersen" and so forth. Well "your" almost exclusively lily white teams have achieved absolutely nothing in 10 years! Since your excuse is that if you give other population groups a fair chance to be part of the Rugby and Cricket national teams (even provincial) performance will suffer, what have you achieved on the World stage to justify your racial discrimination, what performance has your so called “merit” produced?
The rest of South Africa has been waiting very patiently to see what these "chosen purely on merit" teams are going to achieve but all we have seen is comical errors, lack of leadership, lack of flexibility and indecision when it matters most. Isn't it better to give EVERYBODY a fair chance to compete....?? What would it have cost us if in the past 10 years we had gradually given the majority of this country's population a fair chance of playing Cricket and Rugby at the highest level?
There is a time of adjusting and getting used to conditions that inexperienced players go through (regardless of their race) when played at the highest level, but the most important thing is the long term benefits of having given such players a fair chance. Our Rugby Youth teams and Sevens teams (provincial and national) are always comprised of very talented black players but it is a mystery why these young players are never allowed to graduate to the senior levels of Rugby like their white counterparts. They just dissapear. We have seen just a trickle of non-white players into our Cricket and Rugby teams for too long and even when they are made part of the teams they hardly get a fair chance to show what they can do. All sorts of excuses are given by all sorts of buffoons and bigots.
In case some have been fooled, the cry of "leave our sports alone "/"we don't want quotas" is not really a defence of merit or performance, not at all! Rather it's a conservative mentality that tries to preserve the now discredited racially exclusive tendencies of the past that spanned all spheres of South African life including sport. There have also been calls in South Africa to “privatise” the Rugby and Cricket teams so that there would be no “interference”. How can you privatise a National Team??
What irritates me (and Government and the masses) is that these racially exclusive National teams are touted as representatives of the New South Africa everywhere they go in the world even though the rest of the world may mistake them for European squads.
The word "Africa" just seems misplaced when associated with these teams. The reality is that the majority of the population don't feel represented by them. That is why to this very day even people like Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel still find it very hard not to support New Zealand’s All Blacks when they play against South Africa’s Springboks like they did in the past because little has changed. Teams reminiscent of those of 20 years ago disgrace our flag and muddies the spirit of Nelson Mandela.
The country has been wishing to have a team that we can ALL be proud of in terms of both performance and diversity. You must understand that sport is very powerful and can make strangers friends. This Cricket World cup just reminded us of the fact that little has changed in SA Cricket and Rugby, we have retained the ways of the past but no results are coming through, meaning we are losing on all fronts. We are losing a good opportunity to introduce the rest of the population into our sports (which would have given our team a bigger pool of selection and diversity of playing styles and mentalities, and the bonus of National Reconciliation) and also losing performance wise, we simply are not winning anything.
But believe it or not when these teams lose transformation is blamed even though it has hardly occurred! These teams look like closely knit bands of buddies with a lot of holy cows that cannot be touched no matter how badly they perform. See how easy it is for them to drop a non-white player even if he happens to be performing excellently. But it doesn't surprise me.
The rest of the population has waited too long for transformation. So my message to those White South Africans who don't want the rest of us anywhere near "their" Sport is, keep “your” Sports! Our patience has worn out and so we have gone past the point of caring. We won't be bothered if “your” Springboks crash badly (again) at the Rugby World Cup in France later this year!
“You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people all the time”
