South Africa

South Africa has produced more than its share of great golfers. And yet Trevor Immelman’s victory in today’s Masters at Augusta National made him the first South African winner of a green jacket since the incomparable Gary Player won in 1978. This was Immelman’s tournament and Immelman’s week. He was unflappable playing from the lead and never put himself in a position where his lead was in jeopardy. Tiger Woods never got it going, and the other challengers let the moment get to them.

There are those who say that there is no place for politics in sport, or for sport in politics, but such people are knaves or fools. Sports and politics have always been linked, and those who decry the politicization of sport tend to have their own political axes to grind. Opposing the global boycott of South African sport during the apartheid era, for example, was itself an insertion of politics into sport. The idea that somehow boycotting sport was political but that playing games against a pariah state’s segregated sports team– that allowing sport to go on amidst people’s clear opposition to a noxious racist regime — was not represents a form of intellectual chicanery that warrants little more than scorn.

Inevitably sport reflects the societies in which it is played. Not surprisingly, then, racial transformation in South African sport is and will continue to be a contentious issue as two fundamental sides face off: One arguing that issues of race and transformation have no place on the sports fields and one asserting that the days of protecting and privileging the white minority should be long over and that conscious efforts to transform the South African sporting scene are overdue.

My own take is that the most important progress will happen at the developmental level, where sport is about far more than “merit” and winning or losing. But at the highest level there still should be a conscious effort made to field competitive, world-class teams while still pushing for inclusiveness in sports that intentionally were exclusive for decades. All things being equal, in other words, give the edge to the person who would not have been allowed on the team in the bad old days.

This debate is all over the sports pages of South Africa these days, no matter how stubbornly some believe in building a wall between sport and the real world, as if these are different things rather than sports being a component of the real world. Thus race arouses controversy in questions over Springbok selection (present but also past, as if the two are separable in the context of South Africa),  the increasingly controversial composition of the Proteas, and among the chattering classes of the sports commentariat, who make arguments criticizing “short-sighted administrators who, 14 years into democracy, continue to confuse transformation with discrimination” as if fourteen years represents a long period of time and under the presupposition that the ongoing attempts at transformation represent prima facie cases of discrimination, the apparent belief being that whites are entitled to spots on the country’s national and professional teams unless black players can prove otherwise.

Transformation of sport in the country is not going to happen without both concerted effort and the ruffling of feathers of those who feel entitled to spots in the country’s sporting elite simply because they have always held those spots.  Cynical knee-jerk invocations of “discrimination” should not successfully prevent necessary changes from taking place. South African sport is strong enough to endure these necessary adjustments that will do nothing more than make the games South Africans play (and the society in which they play them) better.

Although the ICC One Day cricket World Championship does not carry with it the cache of a World Cup title, it still would represent a nice feather in the cap of the Proteas. The South Africans are within range of claiming that title if they can just muster up two more wins over Bangladesh. Given the recent crises within the sport, the One Day crown might salve at least a few wounds.

Meanwhile, fresh off of their more significant rugby world championship, South Africans hope to host the Rugby World Cup in 2015, twenty years after the Springboks’ epochal home triumph in 1995. That South Africa has successfully hosted the event before, the country’s status as a global rugby power, the tie-in with 1995, the fact that South Africa shares a time zone with European nation (which thus makes it appealing from a television perspective), and the 2010 FIFA World Cup being held in South Africa all would seem to point to reasons for optimism that the bid will succeed.

Finally, a new season of Super 14 rugby is well under way.

Here is a quick roundup of some Africa-related news stories that have caught my eye in recent days:

Despite the fact that the media lives by the age-old credo “if it bleeds it leads” with regard to crime stories, which serves to warp people’s perspectives on the nature and frequency of crime, violent crime rates are actually dropping in Gauteng.

Does the recent peace agreement in Kenya signal better days ahead? Roger Cohen of The New York Times thinks as much.

Robert Mugabe might be starting what he believes to be his “march to victory,” but increasingly members of Zanu-PF are throwing their support behind Mugabe’s intrepid challenger, Simba Makoni. I still do not see Mugabe allowing Makoni to wrest his crown away, but if somehow it happens, I envision many of even Mugabe’s most ardent supporters responding to Mugabe’s defeat in the same way that the Wicked Witch’s praetorian guard responded after Dorothy liquidated their boss: “Hail Simba!”

One trend that I have noticed in American sports is the increasing presence of African athletes making their mark on the playing fields. Many of these athletes came to the United States when they were young children, many others were born in the United States to African parents, and still others found themselves face-to-face with American college coaches whose recruiting tentacles extend wider and deeper with each pasisng year. The usual push-pull factors are at play in these immigrant cases: On the run from war or privation or political chaos, drawn to the idea of America as the land of opportunity. The New York Times has the story of one such athlete, Hasheem Thabeet, a 7′ 3″ center for the University of Connecticut’s men’s basketball team who has become something of a folk hero in his native Tanzania.

Finally, what does it mean to be a citizen of a country? Is it sufficient to be born there? must one’s parents also be citizens of the country? Ireland is one of many nations dealing with these questions, and African immigrants represent the political football being kicked around.

Periodically you’ll hear the whispering: FIFA is displeased with South Africa’s progress in preparing to host the World Cup in 2010. Every sign of “political instability” (which is a patronizing way of referring to political division, which every vibrant democracy has) or possible internal conflicts in the organizing effort sends the FIFA overlords and Afro-pessimists scurrying to consider other options. Danny Jordaan, the chief executive of South Africa’s World Cup Local Organising Committee (LOC), rejects reports that the body is beset by infighting. President Thabo Mbeki and Sports Minister Makhenkesi Stofile insist that the World Cup will go on and along with many optimists that they will be a rousing success, with some going so far as to argue that the World Cup will do for Cape Town what the Olympics did for Bercelona, w3hich hosted the Summer Games in 1992.

To be sure there are legitimate concerns about the World Cup. The recent power outages must be disquieting for even the most cockeyed of optimists and while crime is an easy bugaboo for the country’s detractors, it is also a very real issue. But as with so much in South African life, internal dissent seems to break down largely along racial lines, with whites being the most pessimistic about the country’s chances to pull off what will be an impressive (and at times seemingly Herculean) task. South Africa will accomplish a successful and historic World Cup.

Will there be glitches both in the lead-up and over the course of the event itself? Surely. Just as there are glitches in the planning and lead-up to every Olympics, World Cup, and other vital global sporting event. Surely it is more daunting to host an Olympics in London in 2012 than a World Cup in South Africa in 2010, and there will be similar infighting, political and infrastructural impediments and unanticipated issues that will emerge, and yet no one will question the innate ability of Londoners or of the English to handle such an immense undertaking. There were lots of questions about Athens’ ability and preparedness to handle the 2004 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee has found itself embroiled in scandal, particularly when it came to the awarding of the Salt Lake City bid. None of these aroused the sorts of reductionist concerns that haunt the 2010 preparations. Hopefully all of the doubters will be effusive in their praise — and their apologies — after what may prove to be the most lively of all World Cups.

The sun will rise, the sun will set, and South African sport will exist in a perpetual case of turmoil. Or so it seems. Winning the Rugby World Cup last year does not seem to have provided a balm to SARU’s (usually self-inflicted) wounds and in many ways seems to have rubbed them raw. Even the hiring of the first black coach in Springbok history has not alleviated the racial pressures that threaten to tear apart South African rugby. And the national cricket team has been the target of finger pointing and accusatory words as the result of the Proteas’ racial composition. Race and sport are deeply intertwined in South Africa, and the country is going to have to continue to wrestle with these issues, which rarely have easy solutions even if some have facile answers.

In fact, the hiring of Peter De Villiers may simply have exposed some of the uglier politics in South African rugby’s seemingly atavistically racist culture. Jake White, who led Amabokoboko to the world championship last year, believes that the politics that always threaten to tear apart what should be a thriving rugby infrastructure may cost De Villiers his job sooner than anyone imagines. A  t almost the same time as White was making his ominous prediction, Sports Minister Makhenkesi Stofile had some strong words of his own, warning that the government will not sit idly by if it perceives that South Africa’s sporting community is rife with racism. 

South Africa will be dealing with the turmoil of transformation, racial and otherwise, for some time yet to come. And that transformation will not always be easy. Sport carries such symbolic and cultural resonance in South Africa that it should not come as a surprise that the national teams are a flashpoint for political issues. Romantics and fools might argue that politics has no place in sport and vice versa, but sports history, in South Africa and worldwide, have always played a political role. Sports sometimes lead societal debates, sometimes follow them, but are almost never exempt from them. Some might wish that sport existed in a hermetically sealed universe. It does not, and wishing for something different will not make it so.

In a game in which both Bafana Bafana and their Senegalese opponents needed a win (plus some help) to advance in the African Nations Cup, the two teams fought to a 1-1 draw, thus knocking one another out of the tournament. South Africa coach Carlos Alberto Parreira has his work cut out for him if his charges are to continue the history of host team successes in the World Cup and if Bafana Bafana is to be the African team that quadrennially strikes fear into the hearts of the more traditional powers. There is time yet — two-plus years is an eternity in international sport. But as of right now, South Africa’s most popular national team does not measure up.

Let’s forget, if at all possible, the power outages, political debates, Robert Mugabe’s destabilizing jackassery, and all of the other mundane grimness that afflicts South African public life these days. For the world of sport provides two of the saddest stories of all. The first is the fact that Bafana Bafana appears set to bow out of the African Nations Cup with barely a peep barring some sort of freak miracle involving St. Jude smiling upon their boots (and frowning upon some others). It seems like a long way from the rarefied air South African football seemed to occupy in the period from 1996 to 1998 or so.  If the possibility of a flameout from the country’s footballers isn’t enough to arouse paroxysms of frustration (and drinking) then the impending retirement of Protea Shaun Pollack will push most fans of South Africa’s sporting scene over the edge.

South Africa is a sport-mad society and 2007 was a year to fuel the country’s passions. The Proteas’ participation in the cricket World Cup and the run-up to South Africa’s hosting the 2010 World Cup would ordinarily have been the stories of the year, but by winning the Rugby World Cup the Springboks became the biggest story in South Africa’ s sporting scene in 2007 and one of the biggest stories period.

 IOL has a number of yearly wrap-up stories on rugby, including here, here, here, here, here, and here.

And for some of the year’s most memorable international sports quotations, see here.

Finally, as with just about every other facet of South African life, sports and politics often merge. The Mail & Guardian ran an interview this week with Sport and Recreation Minister Makhenkesi Stofile about the new Sports Amendment Act, which allows the government to intervene in matters related to sports, and about transformation in sport in general.
 

Polokwane is not the only (or arguably even the most) contested political terrain in South Africa. One can be certain that the naming of Jake White’s successor as Springbok head coach will be every bit as full of recriminations, barbed comments, and backroom politicking as anything that happens among the ANC’s National Executive Committee in the next month. White, who just published his autobiography (which is flying off the shelves at a rate faster than any book in South Africa in recent memory), providing perfect synergy for South African Rugby Union’s (SARU) decision-making process, will be happy to leave behind some of the baggage that goes with the top coaching post in South African rugby. SARU has announced that the new coach will be named on January 9.

White, who spent much of his tenure under heavy fire from critics, but who left his Springbok post almost wholly vindicated, has also weighed in on his preferred replacement. If his will comes to pass, it will represent an epochal moment in South African rugby, as White would like to see Allister Coetzee become the first black Springbok coach. White believes that the front-runner is Bulls Coach Heyneke Meyer, the only white candidate on a short-list of four. the other candidates are South Africa under-21 coach Peter de Villiers and Chester Williams, 1995 World Cup-winning Springbok wing. (At the risk of self indulgence, I argued in my South Africa Year in Review, which was published yesterday, that you should “expect Allister Coetzee to gain traction as a possible White replacement.”)