The ANC wants scorecards to ensure racial transformation of national sports teams, much like the post-apartheid quotas which pushed for black economic empowerment (BEE).
This was revealed in discussion documents, released last week, for the party’s national general council’s mid-term policy review conference in October.
Debate about transformation in rugby has raged over the last few weeks, following the national team’s humiliating defeat in the Rugby Championship to Argentina.
At the time, earlier this month, Cosatu said national rugby coach Heyneke Meyer was overlooking black talent and only selected white players.
The ANC has argued in its pre-meeting documents that after two decades the government’s attempts to transform sport have been unsuccessful. “In its attempt to transform and re-invent itself, the concept of transformation and the motivations for and against the need thereof have been oversimplified, often emotional, not clear and sometimes misunderstood.
“To implement, manage and monitor sports transformation, a multi-dimensional transformation performance scorecard will be used.
“The scorecard will enable the sport system to measure where it is in its transformation journey, whether it is improving and to set targets.”
The ANC believes scorecards would ensure multi-racial national sports teams. It also said the scorecards would not target any race group for exclusion from teams. “It is intended to reflect a balanced and timely view of sport and recreation performance.”
But Solly Malatsi, the DA’s spokesman for sport, said yesterday sports transformation relied not on scorecards but a commitment to developing athletes from a young age.
“That won’t address the imbedded problems with the lack of transformation. Sporting teams will comply for the sake of compliance,” said Malatsi.
“There is no need for quotas. We have enough quality talent. We need to ensure (sports) exposure to all people. It starts from grassroots.”
Malatsi said “increasing access to sports codes to previously disadvantaged communities” was the path to transformation.
Cosatu’s Western Cape secretary, Tony Ehrenreich, said yesterday he supported “anything that helps us move in the right direction”.
Ehrenreich repeated his calls for more black players in the national rugby squad. “We do have sufficient black rugby players and they are not being selected by the whiteys. This is about ensuring there is representation on all sports teams. There’s a lot of money in rugby and it should be used at all levels of the sport.”
Critics of the national rugby team have pointed out that in 1995, when South Africa won the Rugby World Cup, there was only one black player in the starting line-up.
Now, 20 years later, there were only two black players in this month’s starting line-up against Argentina. Ehrenreich said at the time: “No other team could possibly perform worse than this team.”
He blamed Meyer for demonstrating a “sense of arrogance in disregarding the interest of the majority of South Africans, by treating SA rugby as his private fiefdom”.
Cosatu said earlier this month Meyer had “white favourites” and “entrenched white control, domination and manipulation of the rugby squad”.
South African Rugby has confirmed that it recently “signed a memorandum of understanding with the government and the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee on a strategic transformation plan for rugby”.
Sports and Recreation Minister Fikile Mbalula’s view is that the country, “need(s) a winning team that is black and white going into the World Cup”.
Mbalula was referring to the 2015 Rugby World Cup, scheduled for September 18 to October 31.