National Assembly sport committee chairperson Butana Komphela and South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) president Moss Mashishi appear to be trying to iron out their differences.
A Sascoc official, who asked not to be named, said the two men met in Johannesburg late on Tuesday afternoon to ”map a way forward for the two organisations”.
The meeting was then adjourned and continued on Wednesday. A news conference is expected to be held on Thursday.
On Tuesday morning, Sascoc did not attend a scheduled meeting with the committee at Parliament. Instead, a letter from Mashishi was read out at the meeting, after which the committee decided to refer the letter to Parliament’s legal department for advice.
It also emerged from the letter that Sascoc would lodge a complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission about remarks Komphela made about Sascoc. He reportedly said Sascoc was ”full of whites and Indians who don’t understand transformation and lack vision”.
In the letter, addressed to Komphela, Mashishi reaffirmed Sascoc’s decision to boycott the committee’s meetings until such time as Komphela was replaced. He wrote that the statements attributed to Komphela were ”racist, derogatory and utterly repugnant”.
Denial
During Tuesday’s committee meeting, Komphela denied that his remarks had been racist.
The important thing was the spirit and the tone in which they had been made, he said. For example, he had not been accused of racism when he called some time ago for more whites to again become involved in boxing and help bring back some of the excitement of the days of Harold Volbrecht, Gerrie Coetzee and others.
It was also important to ”correct the distortion of apartheid”, which had left blacks at the bottom of the social ladder.
”For us to make the people of this country feel comfortable in our own national democratic revolution; we’re talking about blacks and Africans in particular … we must say: What was the status quo before?
”Are we able to deal with the proper intervention in integrating the society of South Africa in making sure that these cruel levels of apartheid, where the black people were [at] rock bottom, are beginning to be addressed?
”It was in that spirit. It was not in the spirit of hate and racism. And I’m not ashamed to say black people in this country are on the receiving end; it is time for us to talk about transformation,” Komphela said. — Sapa