Thebe Mabanga Another week of living in hope and eternal optimism has gone by for South Africa. Without fail, our Olympians have raised our hopes only to bring them crashing down. When the games end on Sunday, not only might we have failed to reach our Atlanta medal tally of five medals, we will also have failed to improve our number of gold medals and we will not have a single medal from a black athlete. This is a bad return from a contingent of about 130 athletes. The spectacular failure of our athletes down under reflects a broader malaise in our sporting psyche and our relationship with sporting heroes across all codes. Our love affair with sports now begins to feel like an abusive relationship, with sports being the abusive partner. The partner promises to make us proud on the world stage, to put us on the map, but then goes on to fail dismally. After a string of disappointments, just as we are threatening to leave he pulls off a gutsy, heart- stopping performance to restore our faith in the relationship. The short-lived joy then gets wiped away as our partner goes back to his “coming close but not quite getting there” ways. In virtually all sporting codes, we are a flawed genius. Our name is mentioned with leading contenders in many competitions but, almost without fail, we are left to speculate in wistful conjecture, lamenting, “If only Gibbs had not dropped Waugh” or “If Nomvete came on earlier …” The first of our problems is the choker factor, so ruthlessly exposed in many instances and rightly pointed out by Australian cricketer Steve Waugh. The biggest of our chokers is without doubt tennis player Wayne Ferreira. So called because that is all he ever does really – play.
Throughout his career the man has flattered to deceive, or maybe he’s deceived by flattery. In Sydney, the last time I saw him was at the opening ceremony. His colleagues, John Laffnie de Jager and David Adams, came dishearteningly close to winning the doubles bronze medal. It seems they have learnt from the average. Year after year, Ferreira gets overwhelmed by the scenery at Roland Garros and washed out at Flushing Meadows. One day, you read about how he stopped a big name and the very next day he gets blown off the surface by an unseeded player. He has perpetually promised to bring us glory but at his best – a point that he has now surely passed – he has won tournaments that are sponsored by tea-makers and only get mentioned in sports briefs. Next week he leads a lily-white team to Portugal for the Europe Africa Group of the Davis Cup. Do not hold your breath, they may come agonisingly close. Another huge problem with our Olympic participation is the racially skewed level of interest among South Africans. The problem stems from, but is not limited to, team composition. Our rowing, judo and hockey teams will struggle to capture the nation’s imagination until they have black players on merit or achieve consistent, awe-inspiring success at the highest level of their sport. The sluggish pace with which some codes have tried to transform becomes an abominable shame when one realises that the privileged few that play the sport are not necessarily the best. It is worth noting that the only people who follow the women’s hockey team’s exploits are their friends and families, failed stars and the TV crews of SABC’s Woza Weekend and Vodacom Sports Nite, to record five-minute clips. Of course the hockey team has to realise that the price of being popular at places like Alexandra is being stuck with an embarrassing nickname like Amahokihoki. That name, though, would still be better than their present; sponsor-induced one of Easi Ntombis (easy girls). No wonder they give athletes an average of three condoms a day when they sign into the Olympic village.
It hurts to keep cheering strange faces on the winners’ podium. It hurts even more to cheer a South African standing on the lowest rung of the podium when you know they could have done much better. It is difficult to be grateful for the four medals we have got so far. Penny Heyns’s body could not do what she prayed for – presumably very hard – one last time. Hezekiel Sepeng failed to improve on his 1996 silver in what is arguably his last Olympics. Llewellyn Herbert dropped from being a gold medal prospect to settling for bronze. Frantz Kruger threw a bronze our way, and is being dangerously touted as gold prospect in four years. It took a man who would be part of our paralympics team if a childhood accident had proved worse to bring us our only silver medal so far. Terrence Parkin, if only you could hear me, well done a thousand strokes. In the face of such disappointment we might find ourselves searching for new heroes. A plausible option would be the MTN Gladiators. Step forward, Nightshade.