Stofile stuck in past
26 Jul 2007
Keo, in his Independent Newspaper column, asks why Minister of Sport Makhenkesi Stofile is willing to accept the Proteas as representative of a new South Africa, but not the Springboks?
Stofile remains adamant the Springbok World Cup squad does not represent South Africa as a new country.
He said it was proof South African rugby was stuck in the past.
Springbok coach Jake White included one ethnic black African and five coloured players in his World Cup squad of 30 – a number government officials said was not enough.
Rewind a few months to the cricket World Cup. The Proteas receive the following message: “Go out there and represent South Africa with dignity. We believe in you and we will be behind you as you stand toe-to-toe with Australia next week.” Yes, the same Stofile sent this message to a cricket side that did not contain one ethnic black player in the starting XI.
Staying with cricket, government officials and cricket administrators lauded the squad composition ahead of the World Cup. Seven players of colour in 15 was viewed as a dramatic breakthrough for transformation, but only one of those seven players was black African – Makhaya Ntini.
The window-dressing exercise at the cricket World Cup was completed when Roger Telemachus did not play a game, Loots Bosman played in one and the first choice slow bowler Robin Peterson bowled less overs than part-time spinner and captain Graeme Smith.
Prior to the tournament Smith told the media he believed in every player’s ability, but he obviously didn’t, otherwise Peterson would have bowled more. Telemachus did not bowl a ball in the West Indies, Peterson bowled just 72 and Bosman, picked as a batsman, never batted. Cricket’s transformation of the squad was a lie, which the government was willing to embrace.
Transformation in South African rugby since unification in 1991 has been a farce. We all know that, but it does not start with the selection of the national squad. A coach can only choose from the players available and in this light the squad is very representative of South African rugby’s player demographics.
This past weekend only seven ethnic black Africans started in eight premier division Currie Cup sides. Only five of these players are eligible to play for the Boks. When it comes to black African selection White is effectively picking from a pool of less than 10 and not 40 million who make up South Africa’s population.
The government should be condemning South African rugby’s failure to transform and should be demanding change at a domestic level. Instead all the criticism is irrationally levelled at the national squad. Cricket, no better than rugby when it comes to transformation, never feels the wrath of the Sports Minister or his colleagues. Why?
Is it because cricket was traditionally seen as an English sport and rugby as that of the Afrikaner? Does cricket get away with it because of the so-called white liberal association and rugby gets caned because of so-called Afrikaans conservatives?
If South African sport is to be transformed and representative of a new country then the sports ministry’s attitude has to be consistent to all sports, including cricket and soccer.
If Stofile believed so much in a cricket team devoid of black African representation, why can he not believe in a rugby team accused of a similar failing?
The answer could be that he, like rugby, is stuck in the past.
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240 Comments
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26 Jul 2007, 17:24 pm
GBS
Sorry I just went back there. I must be getting dumber by the day. I sent you a massage.
26 Jul 2007, 17:29 pm
skunk
So you guys are still on then?
Good.
Face to face is better than here.
Let’s do the business.
26 Jul 2007, 17:29 pm
Skunk,
If your name starts with an X…….. I replied via mail……. phone me!
26 Jul 2007, 17:33 pm
201 – Sent him a massage? You and GBS are really getting to know each other well.
26 Jul 2007, 17:36 pm
mirrag almal. Hoe lyk dinge?
26 Jul 2007, 17:39 pm
hahaha Katman
beat me to it
26 Jul 2007, 17:40 pm
Pietman,
What’s up with GBS and skunk? What are those okes up to?
26 Jul 2007, 17:43 pm
GBS is trying to figure out how to send Skunk a hug as an attachment.
26 Jul 2007, 17:46 pm
207# Loerie Awards, Margate, and some serious rugby going down…!
All for a good cause.
Patience boys, you will have full report by Monday.
26 Jul 2007, 17:46 pm
wateva u dumb idiot! politicians shoul piss off and leave sa rugby.. we need to reamain as the boks and the best playas will play for F%%KS sake!
26 Jul 2007, 17:55 pm
GBS
I’ve just replied to your mail. I will call you tomorrow.
26 Jul 2007, 17:57 pm
Katman
You might also be interested in my idea.
26 Jul 2007, 17:57 pm
OK then boys, now that everyone is all friendly, I will bow out and take the missus to dinner.
See you okes around.
And don’t forget, all the roads lead to Bethlehem this weekend.
That is in the OFS.
In the good old R of SA.
The place to be.
26 Jul 2007, 17:59 pm
cheers Piet
see you around
26 Jul 2007, 18:03 pm
Cheers Piet!
26 Jul 2007, 18:11 pm
skunk, tell me about it at katman1973@gmail.com
26 Jul 2007, 22:12 pm
Does Stofile even know what the public think….
We are a big group of blacks. Zulu’s, Xhosa’s, Sotho’s, coloureds….etc and we are not of the same opinion as Stofile…
White people support Bafana with 1 white goalie?!?
Wake up man….blacks are not the sorry *** victims as the perception Stofile and likes are creating out there…
If the blacks that are there don’t cut it…they should not play…as long as the same goes for the white players….I’m all for it…
And all the best for the Springboks….
26 Jul 2007, 22:25 pm
aaah, skunk, odogg et al,
now i get it at last. so it’s not about facilities or anything else groundroots. its all about money for the brothers – i.e. s14 or bok contacts.
seems like the “africa disease” has reached sa earlier than expected.
what’s “africa disease” do i hear you say?
well, simply, it’s what happens to african countries after they gain indepenence – simply they blame all their woes on their former colonial masters instead of focusssing inwards at the actual problems like fraud, lack of service delivery, personal bank accounts etc.
thanks anyway for clearing things up!
26 Jul 2007, 22:35 pm
218 – charo it seems you are right. It is a pitty that we choose to follow Africa’s example instead of Singapore. For me the saddest thing is the potential we have in SA, but with this attitude will we never get anywhere.
26 Jul 2007, 22:42 pm
I’ll tell you where the attitude is lacking, its in the great divide, I see all of you slating each other from far flung positions of huge division, not even a hint at any reconciliation, just you blaming them and them blaming you, so you really reckon you have some humanity in you? At all? I’m searching to try and find some vestige of it, just a wee trace of some sincere human understanding and compassion and insight. Its because there is still a mountain you have to climb just to gain a small iota of the maturity you profess to possess, unfortunately your lack of insight out strips your vision, and your dogma is steeped in racial prejudice. Pity, great big pity.
26 Jul 2007, 22:49 pm
220 – Skopskiet howzit
Look I am not some rightwinger that emigrated and are then dikbek over the whole situation.
We both want the same for SA, and SA rugby – to be sucsess. We just differ about the way it should be done.
26 Jul 2007, 22:53 pm
skopskiet,
very good point man but i am afraid you speak from a point of inexperience and possibility naivety.
i have lived or worked in probably 75% of sub-saharan africa and the culture is not that different from that shown by odogg and his minions.
i am happy that you believe that all can be overcome here in sa between whites and blacks but it will never be that way – sorry to say.
mbeki has set the tone – “i am an african” and the acceptable level of service delivery – police, hospitals, courts, schooling has followed suite.
fortunately, i am the md of a british shipping company here and both my wife and i have uk passports so we will, regretably, leave when the likes of odogg get out of hand.
very regretably, since this is a beautiful country otherwise.
26 Jul 2007, 22:54 pm
Hello LondonBul, I’m not wanting to judge you or anyone here, I am just commenting on what I see, and what I see is left and right, black and white severe marginalization not getting any nearer to one another in 15 years of participation, if anything I see you all drifting further apart.
26 Jul 2007, 22:57 pm
You say you are African, which African will gladly leave his mother country in search of greener pastures if he sees that it is economically beneficial to immigrate rather than build the nation he so loves?
26 Jul 2007, 23:00 pm
223 – skopskiet, we have a difficult situation in SA. I just think this government has got its priorities wrong. I think the main reason for the divide is not a more white Bok team, but the economic differences. Once you sort that out, a lot of other issues will be sorted. When last did you hear about an economically sucessfull country having these issues?
I think the politicians are doing a **** job in governing the country, a lot of blacks are still piss poor. Now they are taking the heat of them by focusing attention on the demographics of the Springboks. I bit like Mugabe in fact.
26 Jul 2007, 23:01 pm
#224 I’ll be leaving soon too; purely for monetary reasons.
26 Jul 2007, 23:07 pm
Rugby is really a minor issue, believe me the bulk of our population couldn’t give two hoots who is in the springbok team, if you had to ask them who are the springboks the majority of them wouldn’t even know wtf you talking about, the next loaf of bread on their table is of far more valuable importance than how many whites/blacks are representative in the springbok team. We make it far more an issue than most of the population here.
26 Jul 2007, 23:10 pm
skopskiet,
it is difficult to invest time and capital to a continent that has failed in every way.
i know sa is currently different and there is much that is positive but when i read posts like that of odogg and azza, i feel a sense of hopelessness for the white man here – much like the sense that eventually this dark continent will revert back to its primitive rooots.
26 Jul 2007, 23:12 pm
227 – Exactly
The crime is horendous, the economy can do much, much beter and they harp on about this. And I really don’t understand why the Springboks are the only team in the world that have to do “nation buiilding”. Isn’t that the politicians job?
26 Jul 2007, 23:14 pm
Each man to his own, some will seek their fortunes abroad others will stay and fight the good fight, neither is right or wrong, it is only a matter of perception and what holds sway or value to our individual needs and aspirations, nothing, not identity, aspiration, hopes, dreams are so emphatically vital to our ultimate ambition that it is a case of right or wrong, no needs are such that they are cast in stone, our desires and needs alter from one day, year, lifetime to the next, so we are but swallows in search of that elusive endless summer.
26 Jul 2007, 23:16 pm
perhaps if sabc made more of a fuss about losing the rugby broadcast versus the huge hoohaa about the soccer issue then i would be more accommodating about the perceived lack of interest of rugby amongst black s africans.
but it is all bullshit – odagg and his mates blaming the whites for lack of opportunity rather than looking inward at the anc govt.
26 Jul 2007, 23:20 pm
Charo I hear a deep routed sense of insecurity coming from you, a strong identification of the us and them syndrome that is dividing man from man and which has been the case through aeon’s of time, nothing is new here, we come we pillage we take we run and so the cycle continues from day to day life to life, generation to generation, if ever there will be reasonable tolerance and compatibility between races, nations, societies, religions, it is still a far flung dream to the majority of all humanity, whether it be in Africa, Asia, Europe or America, the injustices and divisions between men will continue to blight the humanity some of us profess to hold dear.
26 Jul 2007, 23:26 pm
It is still black and white to you, it is such a narrow short sighted perception this huge monster mountain you have created of superiority and inferiority between and amongst races, it is one huge lack that we have that we see and judge all men by the pigmentation of their skin, or rather fail to see that men are men period, with exactly the same needs desires hopes ambitions and dreams, only the cycles of so called civilizations turn in different spheres so it is always one nation or race dominating another until that wheel turns full circle and then the dominating become the dominated, simply nature and destiny balancing out the injustices, or have you not eyes to see it?
26 Jul 2007, 23:37 pm
Diddy
How can you have respect for someone that is only ever part of the problem, but never part of the solution.
Stofile has been been given the authority and power to do something about it (for a long time now) but does not have the brains to be able to figure out a solution, because he is only in that position because of cronyism. They have butted their head to a pulp against a brick wall by insisting on transformation on the top down, but the practical reality is that if teh Bok coach only has five black players to choose from, then he can’t select ten. If a ball is blue, then it does not change colour because you have legislated that it is red! And that is what these power drunk morons don’t get. Their role is to nurture and vitalise the system to grow it in the way they want it grown, not just criticise and condemn. But they are obviously not smart enough to know how to do this.
26 Jul 2007, 23:39 pm
skopskiet,
i have tortured out 2 posts that now have failed to pitch – no more.
i am afraid the issue is not skin colour as you say above – i wish it was as simple as that. no, it is a culture thing and africans are way behind the europeans, chinese, indians and the rest. probably about 300 years behind. this explains the current problem of understanding each other.
26 Jul 2007, 23:42 pm
goodnight to those bloggers still left here.
chat again in the morning.
27 Jul 2007, 02:33 am
Some excellent posts here, some of you boys are really good at this politico-sport business.
Now here is my question:
Which one of you, if you were a Bill Gates or a Johan Rupert, let’s say, would have appointed Mr Makhenkesi Stofile as your CEO and his brother as your General Manager, with Mr Butane Komphela as Head of Production…….and go to bed at night peacefully with the confidence that your business was in good hands?
If you can answer ‘Yes, me, I would do so without any reservation’, then you shouldn’t be in business.
Rather go teach history or social sciences or something instead, or go work for some or other government subsidised organisation with endless financial resources (taxes, preferably).
LondonBul summed it up very neatly, you cannot use one sport to change all the wrongs in a society.
And read the penultimate sentence of Sjambok’s post, it is all there, what the role of politicians in sport should be.
How can anybody not agree with that statement, anyone of sound mind that is?
Charo said it time and time again, you cannot divorce sport from culture, or conversely, enforce sport upon a culture.
If that had been the case, than all the basketball players in the USA would have been white and all the ice hockey players in Canada would have been Inuit (Eskimo)!
27 Jul 2007, 05:29 am
Pietman
Jy en my mede ex parkie GBS is mos computer boffins. Ek gaan vir ‘n maand in die kruger wildtuin rond swerf. Hoe gaan mens te werk om internet daar te gebruik?
27 Jul 2007, 05:35 am
petoors
Hello
Ek weet van rekenaars maar weinig, ken net van internet.
Maar GBS is die man, hy het grade en alles in die IT bedryf.
Jy kan hom kry by legaleasy@xsinetdotcodotza, hy sal jou vinnig regsien,
Maar hy gaan vandag Margate toe.
Sy adres is telefoonnr ook op sarsu site.
Geniet die wildtuin.
27 Jul 2007, 05:38 am
Petoors
Ek het hom laat weet jy soek hom.
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