chief sports writerA long, long time ago, in a presidential suite at a rugby stadium not so very far away, I turned to a colleague, gave a small wave around the room and we wondered, to misquote Bart in Blazing Saddles, Where the black folks at?
There weren’t very many. Two of them, players, were behind us guzzling drinks at the bar before the team manager, also black, told them to go and stand in the naughty corner.
The South African Rugby Union, Cricket South Africa, Athletics SA and Netball SA were apparently sent to the naughty corner by the sports minister.
On Monday, they were told they were not allowed to “host and bid for major and mega international tournaments in the Republic of South Africa” because they had not met their own transformation targets.
It was a major and mega statement from a minister who likes a big stage. It made headlines around the world. It was meant to.
The minister of sport and distraction needed something to get his president off the front pages.
Elections are around the corner. These sounded like proper letters of reprimand except that, ultimately, the threats meant little. Saru will still go through the process of bidding for the 2023 World Cup.
CSA were done a dirty by the Indian-English-Australian cabal at the ICC and don’t have any major tournaments coming up.And yet, Mbalula made a big and necessary noise about the lack of transformation, even if the data used by the Eminent Persons Group came from the devil of crunching numbers national teams.
Transformation has been woefully neglected. It is a disgrace how transformation has been ignored and stymied and stalled. Transformation has become the big evil for white players and administrators and fans.
On a morning radio show this week one white caller was distraught: “What sport will we whites be allowed to play? They are taking everything away from us.
”Well, because apartheid denied the majority of the population just about everything, but transformation is not about retribution and punishment. It’s about providing opportunity.
It is, as Antoinette Muller wrote in the Daily Maverick this week, “not about taking sport X or Y ‘away from white people’ and it’s certainly not crying over the loss of Kevin Pietersen or Grant Elliot.
Transformation is crying over every Temba Bavuma, Kagiso Rabada and Siya Kolisi we haven’t found.”Mbalula is full of huff and puff in this blame game.
His department should work a little closer with the ministries of health and education, and the provincial sports MECs. Greg Fredericks, CEO of the Gauteng Cricket Board, says they get no assistance from the Gauteng MEC.
But Mbalula’s shouty point has been made. Saru, CSA, ASA and NSA have been sent to stand in the naughty corner until they can answer the question, “Where the black folks at”?
The Star