BBC - "South Africa removes quotas" - World A-Team Cricket Forum

Speedboy Salesman · #1 (**permalink**) 07-11-2007, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBC

South Africa will no longer have quotas for non-white players in sports teams.

The policy has caused controversy in rugby and cricket, and was cited by England batsman Kevin Pietersen as the main reason he left the country.
Sports minister Makhenkesi Stofile says the focus will switch to helping black athletes by investing £15m a year.
"Quotas are out. We are not going to decide who must be on the team. All we are saying is expose everybody, give them an opportunity," Stofile said.
The presence of only two non-white players in South Africa's World Cup-winning rugby team's starting line-up, 13 years after the end of apartheid, led to a new debate over the progress of black sportsmen and women.
World Cup winning coach Jake White was not in favour of quotas, saying the team should be selected on merit.
The BBC's correspondent in Cape Town, Mohammed Allie, said: "The idea of quotas is still favoured by a marginal majority, according to a survey."

He added previous claims by political leaders that sporting success was not as important as bringing through black sporting talent had been revised after the Springboks' triumph in France.
"The World Cup being paraded around for four days has brought home to people how important it is to have winning teams.
"And that's why so much is being put into the team for the 2010 football World Cup - it will be a disaster if the team does not get past the first stage."
Stofile, previously a staunch supporter of quotas, said the experiment had failed but insisted black sporting success stories could be created with the correct funding.
"Quotas were used only for window dressing for international consumption," he added.
"We must kill the myth that black people cannot play certain sporting codes because they are black. "Let us put our resources into the development of talent."

I'm happy this has stopped. People should be played on merits on talent, not race.

Aurelius

YES!! I couldn't believe it when some of the so-called "firebrands" in the ANC thought that this should be introduced to the Rugby. I love seeing good sense win out in the end.

Ninjaman

It took them all of 118 years to finally get to this point but let us see what change it brings. I suspect very little.

Occasional Fan

I think that's the point, Ninj. In some form or another, there have always been quotas in South African sport. For a long and very dark time there were effective quotas for everything, with some getting all of it and some getting none of it (whatever "it" was for the time being). I'm glad to see quotas disappearing and I am hopeful of medium term change to South Africa's sporting team composition. But, Aurelius, let's not knock the ANC for quotas as if they invented them: they've got a long and not very proud history all over the southern part of Africa and elsewhere.

Nostromo

If true, that is the best thing that could have happened to South African sport. It really does not matter whether this change shows-up in the on-field results; the fact that such a system existed was a disgrace - like exchanging one form of apartheid for another. Discriminating either way because of a person's colour - even if it was seemingly to favour the former downtrodden - is not the answer at all. I would never insult myself by applying for a post that was considered "very suitable for a South-Asian".

Ninjaman

I agree Nostromo. It will always be favourable to have a system where those who are the best by merit are selected for sports teams are selected.

However, let us not kid ourselves that merit is the only selection criteria used in team selection (allegedly you only have to say Chris Read and Geraint Jones and this whole messageboard blows up!

) and let's be even more respectful of the truth that the selection policies that seemed to have ended here were an attempt (rightly or wrongly) to go some way to rectifying real problems caused by a far far more harsher racial selection policy that existed in South Africa for decade upon decade that created a huge imbalance.

We trivialise that if we claim that these recent quotas are apartheid replacing another apartheid.

They are categorically nothing of the sort.

oracle

Living is South Africa I can tell you ,it's only on paper that the quotas have been removed ! The quota system is still very alive and kicking ( pun intended ).

Aurelius

Quote:

But, Aurelius, let's not knock the ANC for quotas as if they invented them: they've got a long and not very proud history all over the southern part of Africa and elsewhere.

Of course the ANC didn't invent quotas. But I just remember reading how some members of the ANC after South Africa's World Cup triumph wanted the team to more accurately represent the country's social and racial breakdown. All I could think was that if that happened, then South African Rugby risked becoming a bit too much like Zimbabwean cricket. Anyone-especially in southern Africa- need only look at Zimbabwean sports and see why that can only be a bad thing.

Occasional Fan

That's a fair comment, mate. Constructing a team so that it more accurately reflects the country's demographics is a quota system just as much as it would be to construct it so that it is all white or all black. It would force an unnecessary decline in standards and that's a bad thing. South Africa never expected to recover from all the evils of apartheid overnight and continued acceptance that the recovery is going to take a generation or two is actually one of the country's strengths in my (rather inadequately informed) opinion. It may be twenty years or more before we see the Springboks or Proteas with teams that are 90% black and 10% white, but if it takes that long, as long as the movement is continually in the right direction, I am sure that there will be a stronger result in the finish that a quota-based revolutionary change could achieve. I'm a huge fan of the new South Africa and I wish them well with this changed approach - not only in the sporting world, I might add.

Incidentally, I have used the words "black" and "white" here as a shorthand - no reference to apartheid's appalling racial classifications is intended by that. In fact, I shudder whenever I remember those dreadful capitalised terms which appeared in the newspapers from my younger years.

Aurelius

Thanks OF. But don't justify yourself for using the words "black" or "white"- PLEASE. There's ABSOLUTELY nothing to apologise for!

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