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South African Schools Athletics (Sasa) will deliberate further on the contentious schools quota policy at its special council meeting in May, the body’s president, William Mokatsanyane, told City Press last week.
Sasa backtracked on a memo in which it had initially ordered its members to implement a 40% quota system in the selection of their track and field teams with immediate effect.
The stringent transformation target was due to be enforced at the SA Schools Track and Field Championships that start in Germiston, Ekurhuleni, last week.
Mokatsanyane insisted that Sasa’s decision to denounce the quota requirement was not influenced by the backlash, but the about-turn was informed by the “misinterpretation” of the policy, which was why “we withdrew those memos”. Mokatsanyane said the topic had “attracted more debate than ever before”.
The documents were circulated to Sasa provincial members last month.
The memos required that “a minimum of 40% from previously disadvantaged communities for all Sasa teams, on all levels of competition, must be implemented to reflect the demographics of South Africa”.
The documents said that “at least one athlete per event and age group must be from a previously disadvantaged community”.
The directive prescribed that, for high school athletics, “a maximum of three athletes per event must qualify on merit”, referring to the event’s qualifying standard.
For primary schools, the required maximum was two; the emphasis was placed on at least one athlete per event being from the previously disadvantaged community.
Mokatsanyane said: “It’s been there for a long time. We are not really looking at the percentage as such, but transformation.
“We are going back to our special council meeting in May and quotas will be discussed.
“This is for the development of athletes because all we are asking for is just one athlete. The first, second and third get their medals, and the last three will give us this one athlete we want to expose to competition and develop.”
Sasa stated in its notice that the schools’ athletics controlling body would in future align its selection criteria with Athletics SA.
The national primary schools championships run from Thursday to Saturday; the high school competition is set for March 21 to 23. Both events will be staged at the Germiston Stadium.
Meanwhile, a day after Sasa denounced its transformation policy, trade union Solidarity and its sister organisation AfriForum slugged it out with the sports department before the labour court on Wednesday.
The argument was over Solidarity’s application to have the department of sport’s transformation charter set aside, claiming its quota system was discriminatory. Judge Zolashe Lallie reserved judgment.
The department was one of six respondents, alongside Athletics SA, the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee, Cricket SA, the SA Rugby Union and Netball SA.
The sport department previously ordered sport federations to sign agreements that forced them to reach various targets, which were monitored by the Eminent Persons Group on Transformation.
Those who failed to reach targets would face potential sanctions from government.
