The state of track and field in this country offers a remarkable juxta- position. On the one hand our athletes are seven days away from the start of the athletics programme at the Commonwealth Games, where they’re widely expected to excel. On the other hand the sport’s administration is standing at the precipice. Bankruptcy, it would seem, might be just one bad winter away.
A week or so ago, Athletics South Africa’s (ASA) chief executive Banele Sindani chaired a press conference at the governing body’s Houghton headquarters. Standing at the Oxford Road end of 11th Avenue, it’s one of those grand old houses that 20 years ago was almost certainly the home of some retired millionaire. It’s been tastefully restored with well-manicured gardens. In short, it’s a picture of affluence and tranquility that, sadly, belies the reality. These are truly turbulent times in the administration of South African athletics.
And it all seems so terribly unnecessary. Despite the huffing and puffing from many uninitiated media commentators following the last Olympic Games and world championships, South Africa’s athletes have done well. In terms of prestige and historic sporting significance, Josia Thugwane’s win in Atlanta in 1996 ranks alongside the rugby players’ triumph a year earlier, while Marius Corbett’s performance at the 1997 world championships in Athens, where he won the javelin, was the sporting performance of that year. Most recently we’ve had Hestrie Cloete to cheer about. She won silver at the 2000 Olympic Games and went one better at last year’s world cham-pionships in Edmonton. As things stand, hers is the most credible world title currently held by a South African in any sport.
For those with an eye on the future there is even better news because, over the past eight years, our youngsters have won a hat-full of medals at the biennial world junior championships. So it would be reasonable to think that, like Frantz Kruger, Heide Seyerling and Marius Corbett, who all won world junior titles before making the grade at senior level, the names of Paul Gorries and Jacques Freitag will soon become common usage for the armchair sports fan. The only criticism that can be levelled at junior athletics in this country is that the talent base is quite narrow. The size of some of the fields at the national youth and junior championships this season were lamentable. But then in terms of numbers and opportunity South African isn’t a big country. When drawing com-parisons with the likes of Great Britain and even Australia, it’s only fair to consider just how few of our kids get the chance to throw a javelin or leap over a hurdle as part of their normal school curriculum.
So if it’s accepted that performances on the track are symptomatic of a healthy patient, then why is the sport’s administration being wheeled into intensive care? The answer is simple: ASA has an image problem.
For this observer, whose self- imposed exile in the Cape has only just come to an end, a return to Houghton’s Thursday morning joust, which masquerades as an ASA press conference, was enlightening. Sindani chaired it himself with a view to using it as a platform to launch his new brainchild: the national sports sponsorship convention. But the conference soon descended into a slanging match as the clear lines that normally differentiate the roles of journalists, officials and sponsorship representatives became blurred. Sindani, occasionally volatile but always cerebral, was left chuckling into his decaf.
A potentially uncomfortable morning, during which he candidly reported that his sport was heading for a multimillion-rand loss this financial year, was largely avoided as journalists ignored their pack instincts in favour of fighting among themselves. Even the sponsorship representative of Absa got in on the act as, from the back of the room, she resolutely contradicted the claim that her company’s new deal with ASA amounted to a reduction in its commitment.
It’s an assertion that’s hard to swallow, particularly when you consider that this is the same sponsor that once proudly trumpeted its R44-million deal over five years but is now reluctant to back up its claim by revealing the new figures. Also, next year’s calendar shows Absa has reduced the number of events that carry its banner. The Absa series remains, with its sixth meeting restored, but gone is sponsorship of the national junior and youth championships.
But it’s worth putting into perspective that by entering into another three-year deal the bank has shown its support for a sport where only one other major sponsor, Engen, remains. The oil giant’s test comes in 12 months’ time when its contract comes up for renewal.
So what of Sindani’s national sports sponsorship convention? On the face of it, it’s a worthy enough concept: all South Africa’s Cinderella sports clubbing together with a view to drawing their funding from the same deep well. Among those expected to contribute are the national lottery and national government.
But the problem with the concept lies in the philosophy behind it. By conceding its commercial independence, it amounts to a frank acknowledgment on Sindani’s part that South African athletics is no longer capable of supporting itself. Track and field, once a powerhouse in South African sport, now sees itself as the natural ally of jukskei and ping-pong.
Of course, Sindani’s approach may just be a pragmatic one. That is until ASA cures the cancer at the heart of its being. And recent communiqués from ASA headquarters suggest Sindani has himself diagnosed it. One such release held out an olive branch to white former ASA officials to the extent that some might be forgiven for thinking Sindani was offering them their jobs back.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that athletics in this country is a microcosm of the greater South Africa. Athletics’ roots are bedded deep in the Afrikaans community and, though the balance of power in the competitive arena still rests with that traditional constituency, the administration is solidly controlled by the new order. Over the past eight years unrest between the two communities has provided endless fodder, particularly for the Afrikaans press which, in some quarters, has been happy to chart the sport’s demise.
The English media, including even those journals that target black markets, have, from time to time, joined in on the act of making anyone’s task of creating a harmonious image for the sport virtually impossible.
South African athletics is also saddled with the sport’s perennial global stigma: drugs. Sindani’s attempts to appoint the former East German drugs lord Dr Ekkart Arbeit to the post of national coach were finally scuppered three weeks ago by an aggressive media campaign. This writer’s feelings on the issue are well-documented as these pages were the first to tell you of Arbeit’s dodgy past.
But what is difficult to come to terms with is the remarkable hypocrisy and double standards demonstrated by a wider media and its public that, at the same time as chasing Arbeit out of town for his past misdemeanours, has, in death, canonised a former national cricket captain despite his.