Mkeki+on+Bokke

ANC Today

 * Volume 5, No. 29** **•** 22—28 July 2005

=**Go, Boks, go!**=

The day before the publication of this edition of ANC TODAY, our media gave prominent coverage to the composition of the Springbok team selected to play the Australian Wallabies on 23 July at Ellis Park Stadium in the second match of the Mandela Challenge Plate tournament.

In part, this heightened attention derived from the fact that the Wallabies had convincingly outplayed the Springboks in the first match in Sydney, Australia, winning by the wide margin of 30-12. Naturally all rugby enthusiasts were keenly interested to know who would be selected to produce the victory that the Springboks need to regain their pride and retain the Mandela Challenge Plate.

But equally important and exciting was the unprecedented number of black players included in the Springbok side. Reporting on this development, one of our newspapers carried the front page banner headline – “9 BLACK BOKS”.

Another newspaper report said the changes made by the Springbok coach, Jake White, after the humiliating Sydney defeat, “have resulted in a record nine black players being included in the match 22, with six black players set to start the match for the first time since South African rugby’s readmission to the international fold.”

Jake White was reported as saying that the selection of a record nine black players was “very special for me. When I took the job 18 months ago I said there were black players good enough to play for South Africa. It is about creating opportunities. To be able to pick nine black players in a Test against Australia shows we are creating these opportunities.”

The national rugby coach insisted that he had selected a team he was convinced could and would win the match against the Wallabies. In other words, the black players he had selected were “good enough to play for South Africa.” They had been chosen on merit, as excellent rugby athletes.

This view was echoed by the ANC national spokesperson, member of our National Executive Committee and former rugby player, Smuts Ngonyama. He said: “I know Jake White and he won’t pick a team that he doesn’t think can win. Winning is always first and foremost on his mind. It is wonderful, and I think we have a backline and pack of forwards that will beat the Australians. Now (that) we have speed and power, it should be a brilliant match.”

Jake White and Smuts Ngonyama were communicating the message to our country and people that the Springbok team selected to play the Wallabies both represented a talented and potentially successful rugby team and confirmed that we are gradually advancing towards the achievement of the goal of “normal sport in a normal society”.

This had been the central goal pursued by the sportspeople, such as Sam Ramsamy, who for many years worked relentlessly for the isolation of apartheid sport and the birth of a non-racial and democratic South Africa.

That it is now possible to carry a newspaper story under the headline - 9 Black Boks – is a tribute to the sacrifices they made, to create the possibility for the black and white youth of our country to go onto the playing fields together as one team, proudly to represent one country and one people, united in their diversity.

As we move further and further away from the apartheid years, so do some people find it difficult to understand that much of what we are about today, focused on the reconstruction and development of our country, represents the continuation of a protracted struggle under new conditions - a struggle whose fundamental objectives have not changed.

These new conditions demand much less sacrifice from those who continue to engage the challenges facing our country as agents of change. In this situation it becomes relatively easy to debase and vulgarise the noble effort to create a new South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, black and white.

Among other things, this makes it absolutely imperative that we should constantly recall the example set by those who fought for this new South Africa, when to do so was to invite immense suffering and pain.

In his autobiography, “Reflections on a life in Sport”, published in 2004, the outstanding South African sports leader, patriot, anti-apartheid activist, and member of the International Olympic Committee, Sam Ramsamy, writes about the occasion when the Olympic torch was in our country, on its way to Greece, for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. He says:

“On June 12th, 2004, just six weeks before our team was due to leave for the Games in Athens, the Olympic flame arrived in South Africa from Cairo, Egypt, and was brandished for a day in Cape Town before continuing on its journey to Rio de Janeiro…

“Through an exciting and emotional day, the flame was carried in turn by a succession of eminent South Africans…Gert Potgieter, who competed at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Francois Pienaar, captain of the World Champion rugby team in 1995, Penny Heyns, double gold medallist at Atlanta in 1996, George Bizos, South Africa’s respected human rights lawyer, and others.

“Most memorably, Nelson Mandela held the torch on Robben Island, where he had spent so long as a prisoner. The South African leg of this global journey concluded when Lucas Radebe, the hugely popular footballer, carried the flame to light a furnace on Grand Parade, in Cape Town.

“Finally, the flame was returned to the safekeeping of officials from the Athens 2004 Organising Committee and, at that moment, because no country is permitted to retain the flame, the furnace on the Grand Parade needed to be extinguished.

“After a day filled with cheering and hullabaloo, the dying of the light suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, prompted a moment of complete silence and tangible sorrow. I sensed people around me were moved. I was. At that moment, something became clear to me.

“If we are fortunate, a flame burns deep within each of us. It warms us with its heat, and it shows the way with its light; it moves us to strive for achievement and to persevere in adversity, to make sacrifices, to progress and to do something worthwhile.

“In my life, I have been doubly lucky. A flame blazed within me when I went into exile (in 1972) and started to campaign against apartheid in sport, and a second flame has been burning within me for the past 14 years (since 1990), when I have worked to implement equal opportunities in South African sport.

“For this, I am grateful: and, as I watched the Olympic flame flicker, shrink and die that evening in Cape Town, I suddenly realised that, even now, after all the problems and solutions, after all the great days and bad days, after all the projects and campaigns, the flame still burns within me.”

The national celebration of the selection of “9 Black Boks” means that as a country we recognise the continued imperative “to implement equal opportunities in South African sport”, the objective Sam Ramsamy pursued from the moment it became clear that we had started our journey towards the birth of a society free of the apartheid crime against humanity.

To persist on this difficult journey, and never to lose hope, Sam Ramsamy needed the new flame that still burns within him, after all the problems and solutions, after all the great days and bad days, after all the projects and campaigns that defined his life as a fighter for liberty.

We were greatly honoured that we had the opportunity to be one of the countries that took part in the global marathon that carried the Olympic flame to Athens. Remarkably, only a decade after our liberation from apartheid racism, we demonstrated our respect for the Olympic spirit by choosing as our runners a truly South African team that included Nelson Mandela, Gert Potgieter, Francois Pienaar, Penny Heyns, George Bizos, and Lucas Radebe.

To have put together such a team of runners, to carry the Olympic torch, was an achievement that both celebrated the victory against racism that had been scored and highlighted what remained still to be done to build a truly non-racial South Africa.

Together with the thousands assembled at the Grand Parade in Cape Town, Sam Ramsamy experienced the heartfelt sorrow that descended on our people as the Olympic flame flickered, shrunk and died, suggesting as this did, that our shared hope to build a new society of equality, freedom and peace had flickered, shrunk and died with the Olympic flame.

But, of course, it had not. It could not, while we had among us patriots such as Sam Ramsamy who were and are determined “to strive for achievement and to persevere in adversity, to make sacrifices, to progress and to do something worthwhile.”

Even today, despite the favourable conditions created by the victory of the democratic revolution, the struggle to create the kind of society for which thousands sacrificed their lives, calls for patriots who are committed to strive for achievement and to persevere in adversity, to make sacrifices, to progress and to do something worthwhile.

The struggle for non-racial sport continues, as does the struggle to create a non-racial society. When the Springboks take to the field at Ellis Park, they will demonstrate that it is possible to achieve the objective of non-racial sport in our country, the objective of normal sport in South Africa.

At the same time, this important advance in the area of sport will show that as long as we sustain within us the flame that continued to burn within Sam Ramsamy, even after the victory of the democratic revolution, we will be assured that the struggle for the creation of a truly non-racial South Africa will emerge victorious.

Simultaneously, the continuing struggle for normal, non-racial sport communicates the unequivocal message that this struggle has not become any easier, simply because of the victory of the democratic revolution.

The mere fact that it is only after 11 years of freedom that we are able to field 9 black rugby players, out of a squad of 22, tells the story that the normalisation or deracialisation of sport in our country requires that we fight for the realisation of this objective, as persistently as did Sam Ramsamy for the achievement of the goals to which he dedicated his life.

We must congratulate the South African Rugby Union for the important step it has taken towards building a Springbok team that reflects the non-racial society we are striving to create. The day will come when there will be no need to remark on the racial composition of the Springboks or any of our national teams. We wish the Springboks success in their battle with the Wallabies as they strive to retain the Mandela Challenge Plate.



Thabo Mbeki


 * From: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2005/at29.htm#art1**