The percentages are up, but is that rugby transformation?

Team selection is based on achievement, it reflects excellence and form, and rewards the work and effort players put in to stand out from their peers.

Well, at least that is what it should be. We know that the best players sometimes don’t get selected. There’s partiality on the part of selectors who have vested interests, there’s bias and favouritism and yes, there are racial quotas which have to be adhered to. But the principle stands: selection is based on current and past performance.

Affirmative action operates at the other end of the process. It’s about potential and about giving the opportunity to achieve at some time in the future to individuals who would otherwise not get such an opportunity.

The two are not the same thing and when you select players for representative teams on the basis of skin colour and call it affirmative action you are missing the boat, and not doing anyone any favours.

In this country no lover of rugby can object to affirmative action – we can never reach our full potential if there are talented players who are being denied the chance to develop to their true potential  – but at the same time no lover of the game can be satisfied with the practice of forcing selectors to pick black players simply to meet numerical targets.

Affirmative action requires that you identify players with potential, make sure they get into the system and then take action to make sure they get the coaching and encouragement required to become good enough to be chosen on merit. That includes, when there is little to choose between two players, opting for the black one.

Rugby’s that kind of game. You need coaching, facilities and equipment and you need to play against quality opposition if you want to develop into a good player. The reason why the majority of Springboks (black and white) come from a handful of schools is because they get those things at those schools.

At those top schools the natural talent of the black players comes through and as a result a large proportion of the best players at the Craven Week, year after year, are black boys from schools like that. So, the SA Schools team and the SA under-20s, chosen according to a strict quota, can play against the top international teams and shine. What should be happening at the same time is that the coaching, facilities and competition levels at all schools should be lifted via a coherent development structure. No such thing exists.

Which brings me to SA Rugby’s recent back self-slapping statement declaring that they made significant progress in 2019 in terms of the transformation of the game in South Africa.

The gist of it was that their transformation barometer had leapt to 81% success in 2019, from 59% the year before. Success was achieved in 38 of the 47 areas of measurement set out in its Strategic Transformation Development Plan 2030 (STDP 2030).

That sounds impressive and seems to indicate that we are well on the way to reaching the goal that many of us a striving for – a time when rugby teams can be selected entirely on merit and, at the same time reflect the racial composition of the population.

It’s clear from what you see and hear, however, that we are still a long way from that. I wanted to see what the percentages quoted in the SA Rugby statement meant, so I downloaded the STDP 2030 document from their website. It’s a serious publication, glossy and well-designed and running to 60 pages long, and it’s all about race.

Four dimensions are laid out: Dimension 1: Access to the game; Dimension 2: Skills and Capacity Development; Dimension 3: Demographic Representation; Dimension 4: Performance; Dimension 5: Community Development and Social Responsibility and Dimension 6: Corporate Governance.

How the provinces are performing relative to targets set in each of these is the basis of the evaluation. What they mean by that is what percentage of players, coaches, referees and officials etc are black. And what black means is clearly spelt out. There are Black Africans - Black African South African citizens and Black people - a generic term used to refer to African, Indian, and Coloured South African citizens. The distinction is important when it comes to team selection targets and quotas.

The numbers certainly are up and, it seems, SA Rugby is quite proud of that. The problem is that there’s no distinction drawn between selection and affirmative action. How many of those black rugby people are there because their potential was identified and they were trained mentored and guided; and how many were selected because of a quota which had to be complied with?

For proper, sustainable transformation to happen, systems have to be put in place that bring people through the ranks in numbers. That costs money and takes hard work – it’s far easier to tell everyone, as STDP 2030 does, that you have to meet the numbers. When they do that, and the targets are met in that way, it seems a little hollow to be bragging about it via press releases.