A quality of South Africans is that we believe the world is ours for the taking. Not for us the business of playing percentages. There’s nothing of the effete English cricketer in us. No, if there is a game to be played or a race to be run, we know that we can win it. Moreover, that we bloody well should win it. And we know that our people in the grandstands and glued to their TVs expect us to win. For others, this is tiresome arrogance on our part. Or “South African exceptionalism”, in the disapproving words of a senior foreign journalist based here for several years. It may well be both. But we do not assume it is our lot to lose. We assume it is ours to win. We like to win. We want to win. And more so than ever before – now that we have thrown off the ball and chain of apartheid – we expect to be up there when the tape is broken, a record smashed or a cup awarded. For South Africans, perhaps more so than for many other nationalities, sport does, indeed, offer an image of well-being. But, when we fail to be competitive, it induces in many of us a feeling of feebleness – that we have betrayed both our potential and the best of our national character. Sadly, our performance in Sydney leaves us with such a feeling. We just have not done our best. We have not done as well as we could have and should have. We have not served ourselves well. The fault for this does not lie with the athletes themselves. They patently did what they could. Hezekiel Sepeng strained every last muscle in his body to make the bronze medal in the 800m. Llewellyn Herbert did likewise in the 400m hurdles, although he did not win a race he might have. And Penny Heyns? Well, she peaked – or was allowed to peak – too early to do well at the Olympics.
The fault – if such it is – lies elsewhere. We have, in the six years since the birth of our democracy, failed to develop our sporting potential to anything like the extent we could have. Our sportsmen and women have been the victims of sometimes greedy and corrupt, and very often unimaginative, sports administrators. As a result, vast reservoirs of talent lie untapped, undeveloped and now wasted. We have squandered opportunities to develop the sporting potential of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of our young men and women, very often from the ranks of the poorest in our society, and to propel them to a world of plenty they could not reach by any other path. Sport is a great leveller, and the opportunities it provides could already have levelled life’s playing field for many. Sport is, when it reaches the professional level, no less worthwhile a form of small or micro-enterprise than any other.
We have, it is true, had many other calls on state and sponsors’ funds. Education, health, provision of safe water supplies – these are, and have all been, important priorities on which the government has been right to concentrate. But sport needs now to be moved up our list of national priorities.
Apart from its potential to provide the talented with livelihoods, it has across the world in recent decades provided an invaluable catchnet short of a life of crime for very many socially disadvantaged youths. It can be a significant influence in the development of individual character. More even than religion, sport unites South Africans across the traditional divides of race and income. Sport is our passion, our call to unity, our proof that we are not just hicks in a competitive world. Our sporting talent, our ambition and our exuberance in South Africa are not in doubt. Where we have failed thus far is in managing and developing it. Other countries have shown the way. Australia, with half our population though considerably more national wealth, is among the countries to develop national sports academies which spot talented individuals early, provide them with state sponsorship, ensure they have access to appropriate facilities, and steer them towards the coaches best able to take them to world standard. Cuba, another small nation, has shown just how creative a role the state can play in this process. But so, too, can private sponsors. Already, in South Africa, corporate sponsors have played a positive role in developing our sport. Perhaps the time has now come, however, for a meeting which brings together the state, sponsors, sports administrators and – most important of all – sportsmen and women, now active, who are best able to identify their own needs and the needs of the next generation. The only item on their agenda must be: how do we maximise the development of sporting talent in South Africa? The amiable and able Ngconde Balfour has what it takes to spearhead this effort. He has shown he has enough goodwill and respect from sports administrators and sportsmen and women to be the catalyst. President Thabo Mbeki may also have a role to play in this – if only by helping return us as a nation to the sense of confidence and understated equanimity that Nelson Mandela managed to instill in us. Discovering our winning ways means committing ourselves to process and method. We have the talent and the exuberance. All we need is the direction.