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In just over a month, our good republic will be 25 years old.
There will be big celebrations.
If it wasn’t for the state of the economy and the vagaries of Eskom, they would have been tremendous celebrations, as the orange human with tiny hands in the US would say.
The ANC will remind us about all the wonderful things it has done for us, while its opponents will tell us how the governing party has fallen far short of achieving the great South African dream of liberating the people from poverty and hopelessness.
President Cyril Ramaphosa will address an official rally somewhere and mix government speak with ANC electioneering.
Jacob Zuma will be running around trying to satisfy his multiple families, as people of his disposition do on public holidays.
Breakfast here. Lunch there. Tea here. Supper there. And then where to go to do the things that come after supper. Do you stay at the supper place or do you go back to one of the residences that you visited during the day?
Or do you split the night the same way you split up the days? Oh, it is so tough.
But Zuma’s public holiday conundrums are not what we are here to talk about. We are here to talk about some of the ridiculousness that makes you want to dig a hole and climb in.
So, there is this person called Peppi Olevano. She is the general secretary of South African Schools Athletics (Sasa), which oversees track and field sports in learning institutions.
Last month, Olevano sent out a circular outlining quotas that were to be immediately implemented in schools.
And herein lies the ridiculousness that makes you want to crawl into the ground.
According to the letter she distributed, all Sasa teams had to reflect a minimum of 40% of previously disadvantaged communities; and at least one athlete per event and age group had to be from these groups.
Then came this highly insulting line stipulating that a maximum of three athletes per event had to qualify on merit.
“At least one athlete per event must be from the previous [sic] disadvantaged community, which can be the 4th athlete in the event [no qualifying standard required for this athlete].
“In the case of primary schools, a maximum of two athletes must qualify on merit.
“At least 1 athlete per event must be from the previous [sic] disadvantaged community, which can be the 4th athlete in the event [no qualifying standard required for this athlete].”
In justifying her directive, Olevano said that, as “far as I can remember, 40% was the requirement but it wasn’t applied”.
Basically, we just didn’t do our jobs, so now we are rushing into it because it might please some political higher-ups ahead of the elections.
She went on: “There are so many disciplines in athletics, but you still don’t see so many athletes from previously disadvantaged communities. We do not only want to see black athletes in middle and long distance [running], but also in disciplines like shot put and long jump.”
So, some poor black kid who has little interest in throwing a steel ball around must be shoved into a team as a quota player so he can embarrass himself and be laughed at by white kids and their parents from the platteland.
Then take a very able black child who wants to emulate Luvo Manyonga and Khotso Mokoena and make him feel like he is in the team simply because of the Sasa directive.
Fortunately, the directive was withdrawn after quite a bit of noise and the body agreed to align its objectives with Athletics SA’s policies.
But not before the foes of transformation and their associates had had a field day.
Olevano’s memo was manna from heaven for AfriForum, the right-wing movement that insists on calling itself a civil rights body.
AfriForum milked the directive for all it was worth and was even gearing up for a court challenge that would be used as a test case to shoot down quotas, particularly in sport.
As soon as she heard about the case, Queen Helen of Singapore rushed for her phone and tweeted the conservative views that she now feels so comfortable with as she nears the end of her political life.
Actions like these make a mockery of transformation and the battle to alter the South African landscape.
There is no doubt that a lot still needs to be done to transform sporting codes at all levels, including at schools.
There will be lots of resistance to this drive from many quarters, not only from the far right, but the Olevanos of this world make the terrain even more difficult to traverse.
Like the chap who used to call himself Jimmy until he discovered in his 40s that African names are actually okay, she is just a poser who wants to sound radical.
Now, back to the 25th year of our democratic South Africa.
It is an indictment on our state and society that a quota system even exists, and it is an indictment on the school system that transformation at the level of school sport has to be enforced.
