Alleged threats to withdraw the passports of the South African rugby team heading for the World Cup in France in September and October have been dismissed by the Home Affairs Ministry.
Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has no right simply to withdraw passports without valid reasons, her spokesperson, Cleo Mosana, told the South African Press Association on Tuesday.
She was responding to a report in Beeld newspaper that National Assembly sport and recreation committee chairperson Butana Komphela had warned that team and management passports could be withdrawn if the tour group did not comply with transformation requirements.
”We will try to persuade the minister of home affairs to cancel their passports if the team is not representative,” he reportedly said.
Komphela said this was the worst possible scenario, but not something the committee would like to see happen.
According to the report, he intimated that six black and/or coloured players in the World Cup team might be enough.
Mosana said there were no legal grounds for team members’ passports to be withdrawn, simply because of a lack of representivity.
A passport could only be withdrawn on ”genuine grounds, like criminal matters”.
In any event, the minister had not been approached on the issue, Mosana said.
Komphela was in a meeting on Tuesday afternoon and not immediately available for comment.
Freedom Front Plus (FF+) spokesperson Werner Weber challenged Komphela to ”follow through on his threat”.
”In the first place it is not for the sport committee or Komphela to issue or withdraw passports, but it is the work of the Department of Home Affairs, subject to strict prerequisites,” he said in a statement.
If the government, or the specific department, should indeed decide to take Komphela’s threat seriously and withdraw the passports, government could prepare itself for a new international sport boycott, because this would be against international sporting codes.
Weber said his party would monitor developments around the draft Sport and Recreation Amendment Bill.
”The FF+ is convinced that if the government intends to interfere directly in sport administration, it will be placing South Africa’s involvement in the [2010 Fifa] Soccer World Cup at risk.
”Countries such as Greece and Kenya were suspended from Fifa for similar interference into their respective countries’ sport administration,” he said.
Echoing Weber’s sentiments, civil rights group AfriForum said government interference in sport could result in South Africa’s isolation from international sport.
AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel said in a statement Komphela should be aware that the Charter of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) expressly prohibited ”political abuse of sport”, as well as all forms of discrimination in sport.
Because most sports in South Africa, including rugby, were affiliated to the IOC, Komphela ”is gambling with the international prestige of South African sport with such statements”, Kriel said. — Sapa