Sam Ramsamy is likely to be invited to become a member of the IOC — a just reward for his long battle against racism in sport, writes Julian Drew
ON a weekend when the Springboks and All Blacks will be battling it out for the right to face each other in next Saturday’s Rugby World Cup final, the man who battled so hard to keep them apart 19 years ago is expected to receive the highest accolade open to a sports administrator.
National Olympic Committee of South Africa (Nocsa) president Sam Ramsamy is in Budapest this week for the annual congress of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and it is widely believed that IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch will invite him to become a member of the organisation.
For Ramsamy things have changed dramatically since the day back in July 1976 when he, as chairman of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (Sanroc), and African IOC member Jean Claude Ganga, met Lance Cross and Sir Arthur Porritt at the Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal.
Cross was an IOC member and chairman of the New Zealand Olympic Committee while Porritt, a Kiwi bronze medallist in the 100m behind Harold Abrahams at the Chariots of Fire Olympics in Paris in 1924, was also a member of the IOC. At that very moment the All Blacks were already in South Africa on a rugby tour which was threatening to cause an African boycott of the Montreal Olympic Games.
Just a few weeks earlier Hector Peterson’s face was plastered across the world’s front pages as Soweto erupted into conflagration. The All Black team was caught in the cross fire between the people and the machinery of the apartheid regime as the South African Police fired teargas at demonstrators and some of the players were engulfed by the fumes.
“We told them — look, you’re humiliating yourselves, why don’t you withdraw the team from South Africa? This is an ideal opportunity to withdraw and if you do it now then everything can be saved. You will be treated with the highest respect within the IOC and there will be no boycott. That way everybody will save face,” recalls Ramsamy.
The two New Zealanders agreed to speak to their government and rugby authorities but that was the last Ramsamy and Ganga heard from them. Either they thought the Africans were calling their bluff and didn’t take the boycott threats seriously, or they just didn’t care. Whatever the truth behind the lack of response from the New Zealanders it is clear that the IOC, preoccupied with Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s attempts to exclude Taiwan from the Games, did not take the African boycott seriously.
By the time they woke up to the reality of it all it was too late. A few days after that meeting at the Elizabeth Hotel the Organisation of African Unity met in Mauritius and decided that Africa would pull out. Ramsamy and Ganga were devastated and had to stay on to supervise the withdrawal of the African teams who were already firmly ensconced in the Olympic Village.
“We didn’t want a complete boycott of the Games. Our idea was to withdraw Africans from events in which New Zealand took part thereby turning New Zealand into a pariah. We wanted to target New Zealand, not the Africans and the Olympic Games,” says Ramsamy.
Such feelings were understandable from Ramsamy. Having been deprived the opportunity to compete in his own country for so long he did not want to deny all the Africans their
Ramsamy was a keen sportsman as a youngster and his first knowledge of the Olympics came at an early age. “My first awareness of the Olympic Games was in 1948 when I was 10 and my father explained to me about the Games that were going on in London at the time from the newspapers.
“I’ve followed the progress of every Olympic Games since then,” says Ramsamy. “I remember the next one was in Helsinki in 1952 and I was involved in swimming by then. Joan Harrison won the 100m backstroke. I was in standard six and I didn’t understand the full implications of racism in sport by that stage. When she won I was overjoyed. It was my first experience of a South African winning a medal and she is still very special to me. Whenever she comes to any of our swimming championships I always ask her to present the medals,” says Ramsamy, who is now president of Swimming South Africa.
“I started becoming aware of De Coubertin’s ideas about the Olympics in 1956 in my matric year. That year the Olympics were in Melbourne and I remember thinking why can’t we have the Games in South Africa. This idea germinated inside me all those years ago but that was when I didn’t understand the political implications and I said wouldn’t it be great to have them here because then we could all take part. When we saw the Olympics we used to see the Jamaicans taking part and I didn’t realise that we as black South Africans couldn’t take part,” says Ramsamy.
Today the dream of Ramsamy and thousands of other South Africans could become a reality with Cape Town’s bid for the 2004 Olympic Games. If, as expected, Ramsamy becomes a member of the IOC, that task could become a lot easier. But more than that, his membership would be a fitting tribute to more than 30 years of tireless and selfless service to the cause of non-racial sport in South Africa.