Gavin Evans Hezekiel Sepeng comes fourth: the rolling picture says it all. Disorganisation, bad timing, leaving it too late – the fate of South Africa’s sole black medal prospect on the track was set well before the losing line. And as with Sepeng so with South Africa’s entire Olympic bid. Eight years ago in Barcelona it all seemed so very different. We were just delighted to be there, and when Ethiopia’s Deratu Tulu outsprinted Elana Meyer and then wrapped her in a flag as they jogged their lap of honour together – that was a lovely African moment wasn’t it? Four years later, in South Africa’s first post-election Olympics in Atlanta, well, maybe it was deceptive flattery, but it certainly felt good. There was Penny Heyns’s gold rush, Sepeng’s silver and then, the best story of all, that tiny illiterate, much-sjambokked former Free State farm boy winning marathon gold.
Perhaps Josiah Thugwane or Hendrik Ramaala will save the nation again on Sunday, and maybe Ruth Nortje will paddle her way to success. But for the rest it’s probably over – a silver and a trio of bronzes, and none of them from black men (let alone black women). So then, not only a pathetic sporting failure from such a sport-obsessed nation, but a disturbing political failure too. Because this is not just another game or another Games. Sport matters more than ever before, and for better or worse the Olympics is its pinnacle – a corrupt and venal edifice, but one that represents more than even its own self-aggrandisement would suggest. In this post-modern, post- industrial, post-20th-century world, where nation states have ceded power to corporations and banks and communications systems, an international sporting institution headed by a one-time Spanish fascist official remains the last forum for all the world’s nations and peoples to fan their collective tails without resorting to arms.
Look what it means to Cuba – a collective assertion of national pride through the chosen few, most notably by sticking it to the Americans in the boxing ring, and getting cheered by the rest of the world along the way. Or Australia, where a thrusting vanity about sporting prowess reflects a country’s sense of itself. And more than that, a national will epitomised by the country’s obsession with the triumph of one athlete, Cathy Freeman, assuming the proportions of a mass apologia for a history of barbarity against Aboriginals combined with an enticing glimpse of starting anew along the road to republicanism. A very big thing then.
Or Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Morocco – countries where extreme poverty, corruption, civil war or famine have thrived. And yet their ability to pump out many of the world’s best runners has allowed them to draw attention to themselves, to punch above their weight in world forums and is certainly a source of self-respect for ordinary people. Think even of those who have managed to produce just one Olympic hero – Maria Mutola in Mozambique for example, or, a few years ago, Frankie Fredericks in Namibia – and how that individual comes to embody a people’s sense of themselves. So we return to South Africa, and the way sporting success or failure is taken to reflect something much more profound. Two quick examples: the 1995 Rugby World Cup – a rainbow nation moment (even if forged under apartheid conditions and perhaps won with the help of jiggery-pokery), and the Hansie Cronje catastrophe – a head-hanging, “we must all be corrupt then” mark of national shame. And back to our men and women in Sydney where the hubris of the country’s sports administrators could not disguise the ineptitude of their organisation: again, an apparent reflection of a national malaise. In truth the strange notion that the ability of a few people to run fast, jump far or punch hard says anything much about the state of a nation is really no better than a glorious conceit. Kenya’s medal-rich recent Olympic history tells us no more about life there than, say, Iceland’s medal-free run says about things in Reykjavik. The point is rather that sporting success offers an image of well- being, and this has implications for the way people view themselves. The appearance has an impact on the reality. Given all that is at stake, what are South Africa’s excuses? They’re pouring in already, but I have a particular favourite because it say so much more than intended. Leonard Chuene, head of Athletics South Africa, announced he would set up a “formal inquiry” on Coleen de Reuck’s “poor performance” in the women’s marathon, because he, poor thing, had gone out of his way “to get her into the Games”. He went on to elaborate: “I put my head on the block for Colleen and to say I’m disappointed is an understatement. From 10km onwards she was never in the picture.” Now aside from what this self-indulgent rant reveals about Chuene’s pomposity, as well as his ignorance on De Reuck’s realistic chances and more generally on the vicissitudes of marathon running (does he think Kenya should also launch an inquiry into Tegla Leroupe’s failure?), it says something else: that a single administrative boss can swing things for an individual athlete. Let’s just say it’s not a very scientific way of running things and that it’s time for his head to return to that block. I can already hear the yes-butting: “expectations were set too high – we don’t have the funding and resources of Britain or Australia” (look at what smaller, poorer countries like Ethiopia have achieved); “we’re actually a new nation, still finding our feet” (that doesn’t explain the reversal of fortune since the last Olympics); “it’s all a legacy of apartheid” (why then the failure to find medals in sports where black people excel – middle distance running, boxing, football?). Quite simply, there are no legitimate excuses for failure on this scale. It really is a shame, but one that can easily be reversed. The rot starts with National Olympic Committee of South Africa (Nocsa) head Sam Ramsamy and his government backers. The essence of the problem is a failure of imagination, vision and organisational suss from the top down. The Nocsa boss had moments of brilliance as an anti-apartheid lobbyist, and has shown himself adequate at the task of schmoozing the itchy-palmed International Olympic Committee grandees, but has proved a failure in his prime job: administering South Africa’s Olympic sport.
When you examine countries which have maintained a high level of Olympic success, or improved significantly on past performance, in almost every case a common factor is a national state initiative to discover, develop and fund sports men and women, and to provide financial and organisational backing in sports showing a propensity for international success. That is basically what it takes. In South Africa, where funds are limited and there is a political premium on black sporting success, the most promising approach would be to focus on a few sports where black participation is widespread, and more or less leave the rest to their own devices or leave them out altogether. What’s the point of a baseball team that loses 13-0 to Italy? The three most promising candidates for intensive care are medium- and long- distance running, amateur boxing and soccer. Each of these is a discipline where South Africans should expect to walk off with medals, and the reasons they fail are easy to discern. Take athletics. In the late apartheid era there were two prime sources of talent production, which were both reasonably successful at the elite levels. The one, involving white athletes, both male and female, started with Afrikaans schools and was carried through to Afrikaans universities and colleges. They had the dedicated coaching programmes, funding and state backing which enabled them to pump out world-class throwers, sprinters and hurdlers. This still exists, but appears to be in decline. The second was the mines, which cherry- picked black male distance athletes with the idea of promoting their own corporate images. These runners, which included Thugwane and most of the other leading marathon men, were given token jobs, better-than-average salaries, performance- related bonuses, and were basically paid to run. In most mines this system has either been phased out or scaled down. In their place a network of itchy-fingered corporate agents has emerged, ready to snap up anyone with potential, and fly them off to Europe and the United States. This in itself is not a bad thing – the Kenyans, Ethiopians and Nigerians also head north – but in South Africa it exists without a parallel structure of internal specialist training.
Another glaring gap in South Africa’s athletics record has been the failure to produce any black female runners (or other sportswomen) with medal potential. The reason is sometimes glibly attributed to tradition, patriarchy and “cultural prejudice” as if these were immutable facts of life. Kenya and Ethiopia – hardly liberated zones for women – suggest the opposite: that the financial rewards from international track and road running are sufficient to overcome these prejudices, as long as the state is helping out. Amateur boxing is an even more depressing example: a sport with immense potential for Olympic success and a consistent record of failure. Over the past decade one gym in Mdantsane – Mzi Mnguni’s – has produced about 20 national, African and Commonwealth professional champions, as well as four major and two minor world champions. And yet South Africa’s collective effort at the amateur level produced only three boxers good enough to make it to Sydney, and none of them survived the second round. The reason relates to the complete collapse of structures and administration in several areas, corruption, incompetence and a total lack of financial incentive for boxers to remain amateur beyond the age of 18. Both athletics and boxing could do with more generous and more tightly controlled state funding, a network of talent scouts and development officers and specialist coaches, combined with facilities for elite-level training and sufficient sponsorship for promising individual athletes to allow the best of them to give up their day jobs. Put these structures and facilities in place for a few years and the medals will flow. Four years until Athens is long enough to turn it all around.