Sporting community’s silence disappointing
The past year's resistance and protests in higher education have gone largely unsupported and unassisted by organised sport in South Africa, writes Cheryl Roberts.
|||The past year's resistance and protests in higher education have gone largely unsupported and unassisted by organised sport in South Africa, writes Cheryl Roberts.
Cape Town - The past year’s resistance and protests against structural inequalities and questionable teaching and research in higher education, linking student and worker struggles at South Africa’s educational institutions, have gone largely unsupported and unassisted by organised sport in South Africa.
Actually, not one statement has been released by organised sport in support of student struggles.
Society’s intersections and linkages have seemingly left sport unaffected, despite the deep-rooted inequalities which exist in South African sport.
Despite there being inequalities in sport on all of the higher education campuses with regards to funding, the resistance and questioning of higher education’s accountability to society was ignored. I often wondered about this and found the answer in the presentation of sport in neo-liberal South Africa as being “on its own”, as being “apolitical and non-political”.
Monday’s student protests at the University of the Free State (UFS), which spilled over on to the rugby field, and its subsequent volatility and vicious assault of protesting students, indicates yet again how most South Africans in sport and sport consumers prefer to see sport as being divorced from the goings-on in society, as being separated from discourse, debate, accountability and, most importantly, from resistance and protest action.
Privileged students, like those sorted out with university tuition payment and accommodation, get into their sports clubs and events seemingly unperturbed and not hassled by grievances and protests of many other struggling students. For the privileged student, as long as they are playing sport, they are seemingly taken care of and happy.
The rugby players and supporters at UFS were reminiscent of South Africa’s apartheid rugby and white or racialised Springbokteams and supporters who never spoke out against apartheid, but supported the government’s horrific apartheid legislation and policies.
I recall 1976, when Soweto was burning and student protests and struggles engulfed apartheid South Africa, yet the white Springbok team hosted New Zealand rugby (the All Blacks) on a tour of South Africa. International protests followed apartheid’s rugby tours, also when South Africa’s apartheid Springbok teams toured the UK and New Zealand. I’m mentioning this to demonstrate the link between sport and society’s inequalities and oppression and resistance and protest action.
Visual images of white rugby players and supporters show white students attacking and brutalising black students. This is the sport’s inheritance to young white South Africa; those whose parents and families have benefited from and supported apartheid sport. White people’s knowledge and generational past is to play sport “without political interference”, and support and enjoy rugby like it is next best after serving God.
Despite coming out of a horrendous past of apartheid sport, those who control and manipulate sport in democratic South Africa, mostly sport officialdom and sponsors and including government representatives, have chosen to stay quiet. This makes people involved in sport believe they are flying a rainbow nation flag for a country where everything is seemingly okay, because sport is supposedly about merit and participation, and definitely not about politics and protests.
Sport is vastly and structurally linked to society; sport demonstrates everything about a country and society. In South Africa’s scenario, sport is loaded with social, class and gender inequalities and with corporate control of sport.
So, along came the student resistance movement, and sport on campuses went along and got played and supported as if it was happening in another society and country. This is the cocoon that organised sport lives in. Towards the end of the 2015 academic year, those involved in campus sport were more concerned about how and whether they would be able to play their annual varsity sport events.
The consciousness of all students, including sport students, academics, support staff and workers, must be radicalised to understand how an unequal society operates to maintain long lines of struggle and immersion in situations people find unbreathable and difficult to get out of.
Varsity or tertiary sport is not immune to resistance and protest at institutions of higher learning. Student sports people get exploited and used. Most importantly, varsity sport is affected by inequalities because they are in a society of inequalities demanding structural change and decolonisation.
* Cherly Roberts is a sports activist
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.
Cape Times