A damning report which lambasts major South African sports, including cricket and rugby, for not transforming since apartheid ended, was adopted by the parliamentary committee on sport and recreation in Cape Town yesterday. The report will be submitted to parliament to decide how to improve further racial equality in sport which, during apartheid, became the fiefdom of whites to the complete exclusion of blacks.
It listed cycling, netball, professional golf, cricket, rugby, tennis, canoeing, rowing, hockey, motor sport and gymnastics as those codes "struggling to come to grips with the realities of our new society."
Management structures within these codes, it added, still reflected the old order, with "lily-white" national teams being the norm and blacks sidelined from decision making positions.
Development programmes only assisted already advantaged people and showed a "total disrespect" for the sports culture in black communities before unification.
The report was compiled by the committee after a series of public grillings of officials from the main sporting codes.
It said sport was moving in the right direction and some federations were going out of their way to afford direct victims of apartheid the opportunity to excel in sport.
This group included athletics, soccer, amateur golf, baseball, table tennis, volleyball, basketball, amateur boxing, karate, wrestling and squash.
The report is particularly scathing of the powerful rugby union federation, which more than any other sporting code came to epitomise white arrogance during apartheid to the point where rugby was regarded by blacks as "a white man's game."
The report said racism is still rife within rugby, with white teams refusing to go into black townships to play fixtures, selectors choosing all-white teams and black clubs being neglected by development programmes.
Cricket came off better than rugby, but the committee said it had been dissatisfied with some comments and answers given by cricket officials during their presentation to the committee. They did not elaborate.
