‘Ma’am,” said John Edas with a dramatic pause, “motor racing is lily white. At Motor Sport South Africa there is only one person of colour – and that’s me.”
The members of the parliamentary committee on sport and recreation looked on grimly as they pondered the difficulties of making motor racing a sport befitting the rainbow nation. Edas, a slight, earnest man, was giving evidence at a series of parliamenta ry hearings on the pace of affirmative action in national sports.
It was bad timing for his confession – with President Nelson Mandela taking the stand in court this week in the battle against rugby supremo Louis Luyt over affirmative action, the parliamentarians were not keen to hear bad-news sports stories.
“A lot of people in motor sports don’t want to admit it,” Edas confided, “but motor racing is elitist.”
The parliamentarians chose to grill Edas on the slow pace of change in motor racing, rather than forgive him. They only softened up when he offered to take them motor carting, to demonstrate the high level of co-ordination needed for racing drivers to ex cel on the tracks.
It was a clever move. He had more than enough takers – African National Congress MPs put up their hands and bounced on their seats in excitement. Edas explained that the biggest problem facing Motor Sport South Africa is the lack of funds for development work. The other dilemma is most black people have never learnt to drive.
He said his organisation has to face numerous obstacles in promoting motor racing among the disadvantaged. “We tried to encourage the disabled to race and we had two disabled people racing in Kyalami … but one driver had an accident and could not remov e himself from the track in time and another driver rode over him.”
Edas said the organisation has fared only marginally better in enrolling women. “We had a Woman and Racing Day and we went to Guguletu and asked the soccer leagues if they knew of ladies … but we found only two ladies in Guguletu with driving licences.
“Another time,” he said, highlighting the perils of township life, “I took women to go-carting in Cape Town and on the way back I noticed that the kombi was very quiet and when I dropped them off they explained there was a taxi boycott, and as I was in a kombi they hoped I would not get shot as I left the township.”
Despite the problems, his organisation holds racing workshops around the country and has pioneered an adoption system, in which disadvantaged youngsters become part of racing teams to experience track life.
MPs threw in suggestions: why not open driving schools; why not open up the N1, say at 2pm on Sundays, for motor races; why not teach MPs to drive on gravel roads to popularise the sport?
Edas explained that without money, the possibilities remain limited, the situation tragic.
The private sector, he said, is reluctant to make contributions.
“We took a youngster from a Cape Town township, we put him in a racing overall which cost R2 000, in boots which cost R900, in gloves which cost R400 and in a R4 000 helmet.
“And then afterwards we had to take all these things back and take him home to the township ,where he had to walk 800m to get a bucket of water for his house.”