It’s too soon to force quotas on South Africa’s national sporting teams, writes Tim Whitfield.
The hoary old chestnut has popped up on the front pages once again: South African rugby is too white; and, of course, all the political opportunists have leapt at the chance to score some political points.
Because I am about to be accused of being an old white male stuck in the 1980s and fighting change, let me state categorically I agree completely that South African provincial and national rugby teams are in no way representative of the nation; and they must fully reflect society and need to do this as quickly as possible.
But a knee-jerk reaction to the team-is-too-white brigade, who are mostly interested in scoring political points, could end up doing more harm than good.
Implementing quotas in national teams too quickly may slow down transformation.
There is a right time to introduce young players into the cauldron of international sport, and particularly with rugby, the danger of pushing a player too early is that it will take longer to rebuild confidence than it does skills. Broken confidence all too often results in a broken career.
The second, but possibly relatively minor issue, is that new players of colour will wonder if their selection is to simply fulfil a quota and that will simply add to the pressure as they still feel the need to prove themselves.
The biggest problem, however, is that any team that is not chosen purely on merit will be a weakened team, which is a team that will not perform as well and is less likely to be a winning team.
Any stadium manager will tell you that a team that wins is a popular team that draws a crowd.
To truly develop South African rugby, and create an aspiration for young players to want to play for South Africa, the Springboks need to win.
The first reaction to the rugby quotas is usually “soccer must also have quotas”. This is a blatantly ridiculous argument for the simple reason that soccer is about as representative as possible.
According to the 2011 census, to be perfectly representative, a team of 11 should be made up of 8.5 black people, 1 white person, 1 coloured person and half an Indian person. A look at past teams shows there have been enough white people and coloured people to justify the assumption that, statistically, the team is being chosen on merit with little bias – maybe Shakes Mashaba needs to look for a few more half Indian people, but I don’t think AfriForum needs to get involved yet.
The question that needs to be asked is: Does rugby really have a problem?
There is no doubt South African rugby could, and should, have changed more, but would we, 20 years into democracy, have been right to demand a team of 11.5 black people, 1.5 white people, 1.5 coloured people and half an Indian to have run on to the field in Perth this weekend? I am (very politically incorrectly) going to go out on a limb and say they would have lost by more than just one point.
And they would not have lost because the 11 black people (or even the one-legged, one-armed Indian) are any less competent. They would have lost because it is still too early for us to be forcing quotas on our national teams.
Let’s look at why “it is already 20 years since democracy” needs to become “it is only 20 years since transformation”.
With the current crop of Springboks, we have to assume Heyneke Meyer has chosen a team he believes is best suited to winning each match. It is, after all, his job on the line and I assume he does not have some hidden AWB agenda or is hell bent on returning to the dark days of white domination via the rugby fields.
The average age of the Springbok team that played Australia over the weekend was just over 28 and they had an average of 41 caps between them. The ages ranged from 21 to 37 with an even split of five players with less than 20 caps, five from 20 to 40 caps, and five old hands ranging from 50 to 99. In other words, a reasonably well-balanced team of youth and experience as we head into a World Cup year.
Those 28-year-olds were eight years old in 1994, a couple of years into their schooling. Their thinking was predominantly a reflection of their apartheid-era parents and sadly many of those parents did not know how to spell AmaZulu (amaZulu, Amazulu, or even, as one letter writer once wrote to me, IamaZulu).
I will bet that 11, 12 or even 13 of those 15 eight-year-old kids grew up in homes where rugby was the sport of choice on their grainy TV screens on Saturday afternoons.
Those kids would have watched Francois Pienaar lift the World Cup a year later and dreamt of playing rugby for the Springboks.
For them those dreams have become a reality.
At the same time, in 1994, roughly 78 percent of the country’s eight-year- olds (1996 census) were watching Kaizer Chiefs play Pirates, and those black children in 1996 would have celebrated just as hard when Neil Tovey lifted the African Nations Cup, but they would have dreamt of playing for Bafana. For the current Bafana team, there never were dreams of a Springbok jersey.
So you have to ask yourself, why would those 78 percent of eight-year-olds from 1994 who celebrated “with” Tovey have converted to rugby in the past 20 years.
Some would have gone to “rugby schools” and been converted, but the reality is a maximum of 10 percent would have made that switch – but we had one black person in the starting line-up this weekend – that means out of the 15 players, we have a representation of roughly 7.8 percent (10 percent of 78 percent) of the population.
So, you have to ask yourself whether anything is ever going to change and, if so, when.
Yes, it will, and thankfully, the rugby revolution is already happening, and it can be seen every weekend.
Anybody who has watched a lot of schoolboy rugby will tell you that the rugby revolution is sweeping through South Africa.
Like any major social change, it is happening more in some places than others.
According to Louis Botha Tegniese Hoërskool’s website, they have “served the broader community of Bloemfontein, Free State and South Africa for the past 116 years”.
This is one of South Africa’s oldest schools, from deep in the heart of white apartheid South Africa.
Their website also proudly claims “to have played its first rugby match in 1902” and lists Springbok AJ Venter as a past pupil.
At this year’s Grey High rugby festival in Port Elizabeth, Louis Botha THS fielded a team of 15 players – none of them were white.
And, one of those 15 players could, in the next five or six years, be getting ready to pull on a Springbok jersey.
Durban High School, a school older than the city of Joburg, also with a rugby tradition dating back well over 100 years, fielded a 1st XV made up on average of probably 11 or 12 black players every weekend this season.
When the DHS U14 and U15 teams played the Durban development sides in their annual fixture this year, there were only one or two white players on the field at any one time.
Louis Botha and DHS are not unique. They simply reflect the natural change that is happening as the culture of rugby changes from lily-white to a real sport of the rainbow nation.
Rugby does need a little bit of a stick to hurry its change, but if quotas need to be introduced, make them part of the school system.
With rampant player poaching an undeniable fact of life on the school rugby fields, the win-at-all-costs schools would quickly unearth the talent out there and in 2019, the strong rugby schools would be matching their quota targets, and five years later, the provincial teams would follow.
That is a short step to a fully integrated Springbok side that even Desmond Tutu and Fikile Mbalula are happy to support.
* Tim Whitfield is a sports editor for The Mercury.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
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