Quotas and affirmative action are not the same thing

Affirmative action is necessary and justified. It’s accepted as a valid way of giving those who never got the opportunity to reach their potential, unjustly, a chance to make up the shortfall and compete on an equal footing with those who were given every chance to develop.

And in apartheid South Africa, the injustices done weren’t limited to the exclusion of individuals, they were there in everything required by a developing athlete – the education system, coaching, fields and equipment, nutrition and medical support etc.

To expect players from that kind of background to organically come through the ranks simply because those practices are no longer legal, was never going to happen.

So, affirmative action (AA) was applied in sport, and in other areas like employment law, and it was the right thing to do.

Let’s clarify what affirmative action is supposed to mean. In the classical sense, it's about identifying potential in places that have been overlooked in the past and then, as the words imply, taking actions which affirm that potential so that the previously disadvantaged individual has every chance of making it to the top.

Quotas, on the other hand, are something else entirely. In the SA sports selection context, they are there to make it compulsory to include a specified number of players who are not white in a particular team.

Affirmative action is about potential and growth. Quotas are about selection and reward. Sure, selection is part of AA: when faced with two players of equal ability, you are justified in choosing the disadvantaged one, and you are even in your rights to choose a player of lower ability, if you believe he has potential, but has been denied the opportunity to develop to that level.

Eventually, if everyone is doing their job properly, it shouldn’t be necessary to impose a quota at higher representative levels. The players who have been on the AA programme will be able to make teams on their own merits.

And that’s happening all the time. The examples at Protea cricket and Springbok rugby level are obvious. The stars of those teams are not the white players, most of the time. Now not all of those players went through the AA process. Some are from wealthy middle class families where their parents did what was required to let them thrive, others were from poor families where great sacrifices were made to help them succeed. In other words, they were just talented sportsmen who, like everyone else, put in the work, got the support and deserve the rewards.

But that isn’t always the case and many others have made it to the top because they got help along the way in terms of bursaries, extra coaching and, yes, selection above white players who were better than them at that moment.

The problem is that the keyboard warriors on social media, and some others in the wider community, very often regard all black players as quota players and all quota players as undeserving of their selection.

I heard a strange confirmation of that equation on the radio the other day when a professor, advocating for justice in cricket said “the way they play these days you’d think the white players in the Protea team are the quota players.”

People who believe that are accused of being racist, and they generally are. If AA has been implemented properly it should never be an issue – the black players are there on merit, either because they were good enough all along or because they were brought up to speed through an accelerated development programme, which is what AA demands.

But, if the players of colour are there simply to fill the quota and keep the suits happy, and they haven’t been brought along properly, we shouldn’t accept it. And, if they then can’t do the job, then those who are running the show must take the flak.