We have to do this better

I have never denied the justification for, and the need for urgency in, the implementation of transformation in sport.

The playing fields were decidedly uneven in the past and that’s reflected in the race composition of representative teams. Those who run sport have to change that, and the mere passage of 22 years since the introduction of democracy was never going to do that on its own.

Action was needed, and it still needs to be taken. Positive, pro-active action – affirmative action.

What I have railed against at times when I’ve felt the need to toss in my two cents worth over the 20-odd years that I’ve been writing about this stuff, is the practice of enforcing race quotas on representative teams and then using the number of black faces in team pictures as an indication of the success of the process.

True affirmative action is about identifying potential and developing it. Quota-based selection is a political move.

Sure, creating role models is an important part of growing sport in areas where it has never been allowed to grow because of past injustices, but wouldn’t it be better if those black role models were there on their own merits, instead of being the manifestation of compliance issues.

The sports federations aren’t innocent in all of this. Enforced quotas shouldn’t still be an issue in 2016, and they wouldn’t be if proper affirmative action had been implemented much earlier on.

And racism, I’m afraid, still plays a role in selection. That’s why so many still see quotas as justifiable after all this time, and why they sometimes are.

I know it’s all a bit of an academic discussion – and it’s easy to say things like “if we have to lose matches now to ensure a more representative future, then so be it”. Or “if the odd deserving white player loses out, that’s nothing compared to the many deserving black players who never had a chance in the past.”

I’ve subscribed to those views in the past, and brought them up them in discussions to justify the current policies.

It’s not so easy, though, when one of those excluded white players has a face, and you are looking straight at it as he, after being named in the B team, stands there watching A team players who everyone present, including the selectors, I’d wager, know are not as good as he is, being called up to receive their caps.

That happened to me at the awards dinner at the conclusion of the Coca-Cola Khaya Majola Week on Tuesday, and I found my journalistic neutrality wither and die in the face of the anguish that child was clearly suffering,

OK, I’ve met the boy before – interviewed him and wrote about him – so I don’t hold a totally unbiased view. He’s a super kid, and a great cricketer who I am confident will go far in the game. He didn’t deserve what happened to him, just as those who lost out in the past, didn’t.

We managed to confront one of the selectors afterwards, who mumbled something about the balance of the team and told us to ask whose position was player in question directly contesting, but even my old blind friend on his galloping horse knew it was all about the racial composition of the team.

We have to do this better, because what happened in Bloemfontein on Tuesday night was neither sporting nor educational, which makes you wonder how the entire concept of selecting teams based on performances at a week like this can be justified at all.

It’s not an original story, but that’s my two cents worth on it, anyway.