A Separation of Country and Competition : South Africa: After Decades of Isolation, the Nation Wants to Rejoin Sports World

Flying to South Africa requires patience and perspective. All of Africa seems to be spread out below as the plane zigzags its way to Johannesburg on a curious route. The plane must burrow through endless clouds, for although its presence in African airspace may be tolerated, the plane may not land unless invited.

Mt. Kilimanjaro, snow-capped and majestic, juts abruptly from the desert floor, rising like a kingdom in the clouds. Miles later, the outline of Nairobi’s airport comes into view. Landing there, the jumbo jet spits out streams of khaki-clad tourists with a clattering of cameras.

After spending a long night on the plane, passengers continuing their journey are eager to get out and stretch their legs during the two-hour layover. But an announcement from the captain puts an end to that glad possibility. Those passengers bound for Johannesburg, South Africa, the captain said, are asked to remain on board, at the request of the Kenyan authorities.

Viewed from the plane’s window, the Tarmac shimmers in the summer heat. The plane bound for South Africa sits alone on the runway, like an unwelcome insect.

In a very real way, getting to South Africa is a metaphor for being there. International sanctions do not make it easy. It can be circuitous. If you are going to South Africa, for whatever reason, there are places where you no longer will be welcome. The country’s own consulate advises against having a South African stamp on your passport. It can be infinitely complicated.

Having gotten there, through the tsk-tsking of international opinion, it doesn’t take long to sense the isolation. The world does not want to come here, and people here aren’t free to move about the world. In a sports sense, it is as if South Africa is a nation of children, possessing a beautiful playground and wondrous toys, but no friends come to play. And every day they watch and wait.

But South Africa has grown weary of waiting. Three generations of athletes have stood by and watched. Now they want to play. After decades of boycotts--economic, diplomatic, cultural and sporting--this nation says it deserves the right to play with the rest of the world.

APARTHEID: “A Terrible Dream”

The root of South Africa’s isolation is apartheid--the country’s legislated and systematic policy of racial separation that has been the law of the land since 1948. And, although some reform has occurred in 42 years, the basic tenets of apartheid are still firmly in place. The world’s response to apartheid has been to punish and shun South Africa through a series of measures aimed at disrupting the country’s status quo.

The longest, and to some the hardest hitting, of all sanctions has been South Africa’s sports isolation. It began, perhaps, in 1956, when the International Table Tennis Federation expelled the South African Table Tennis Union, and for the past 30 years, South Africa has been the pariah of sporting nations.

No country has been subject to anything remotely like the sports isolation South Africa has experienced. South African athletes have not been allowed to compete in the Olympic Games since 1960. There is an international ban that forbids any athlete in any Olympic sport from competing in South Africa. There is an international “contamination rule” that forbids competition against a South African athlete anywhere in the world. South African citizens who wanted to watch the 1988 Seoul Olympics in South Korea were told to leave. South African journalists wanting to cover the Games were denied credentials.

The state-run South African Broadcasting Co. is not permitted to buy the broadcast rights to many of the world’s premier sporting events.

South African society has helped fashion its own noose, however. Three decades of isolation has come solely because of what has been called “a terrible dream”--apartheid. Apartheid is the mechanism that has kept South Africa’s nonwhite athletes from an opportunity for comparable competition, training, coaching and facilities within the country. Apartheid classifies South Africa’s people into four strict groups--African for the black population, Asian for the East Indian population, colored for the mixed-race, and white.

The open oppression of the majority--of South Africa’s 36 million people, 27 million are black, 5 million white, 3 million colored and 1 million Asian--has been enough to keep the world away. The international bans forbidding sporting contact with South Africa have been thorough and steadfast. In fact, the solidarity that members of the international sporting community display on this issue makes it unique. Where else can the United States and Soviet Union line up in complete agreement?

Officially, South Africa’s isolation is complete. However, sports officials and leaders in the private sector occasionally finance so-called rebel tours--athletes from “outside” are brought in at tremendous expense to perform in much the same way as entertainers such as Frank Sinatra sing in nearby Sun City for $2 million a night.

There is incentive for the promoters, too. The Income Tax Allowance Bill of 1986 allows a promoter of an international sporting event a maximum deduction of 180%. The law asks that qualifying events must show a material advantage to South Africa. The government views this tax break as a small price to pay to encourage international visitors and ease the sense of isolation.

Companies are lining up to take advantage. In 1988, it was estimated that South African businesses spent $120 million in sports sponsorships and promotions. Sports-related advertising accounted for about 15% of the total ad sales in the country.

So starved are South Africans for contact that money is seemingly no object when it comes to luring athletes. Money has to be the incentive, because most athletes who defy the bans and compete here are themselves banned for years from their sports, thus ironically completing their solidarity with South Africa.

The system of pay-for-play is an interesting example of market efficiency: South Africa creates a market for foreign athletes by offering them enough money to compensate for bans or suspensions. Once banned, the athletes are bonded to South Africa because there is no other place in the world that will allow them to compete. So, they return year after year, and the system steams forward.

South African sports leaders have been creative in providing incentive for athletes to stay here, because there are methods for South Africans--using false passports and names--to travel and compete abroad.

Money has been an effective motivator. In this, South Africa is no different from any other nation. For top athletes, especially top white athletes, there is a lot of money to be made in amateur sports. Aside from prize money, which is awarded at even the smallest competition, there is a large pool of endorsement dollars available to the athlete who markets himself with savvy.

Large South African companies are looking for a black athlete to use as a spokesman, too, but corporate executives say too often a poor education and difficulty with the language limit the opportunities for black athletes. Others note the irony here, since it is precisely limited opportunities, especially in education, that keep blacks from sharing in South Africa’s wealth.

SPORTS: South Africa’s ‘Soft Underbelly’

The various international sports organizations knew what they were doing when they cut off South Africa. The nation has weathered the economic and cultural boycotts with some hardship, but with ingenuity and an inward turn. South Africans aren’t allowed to see Woody Allen or Spike Lee films, but the country’s own film industry is thriving.

The problem for sports is more complicated. Whereas South African artists and writers, for example, have flourished, athletes--who almost by definition must compete--have been retarded in their growth. Athletes become weary of facing the same competition before the same spectators, able to compare only on paper their abilities against foreign athletes, and then only in certain sports. They long to see new faces or even the colors of a different uniform. There is talent here, but there is also stagnation.

The international sports boycotts have hit at what one official here called “South Africa’s soft underbelly,” for sports are the embodiment of South African pride and culture.

Observed David Tothill, South Africa’s ambassador to Australia: “Denying South Africans the means of expressing their own feelings of nationalism through the medium of sport is probably one of the sports boycott’s hidden objectives.”

In the rest of the world, where participation in the Olympic Games is taken for granted, sports surely have their place in society, but a jaded public may fail to be impressed with Olympic medals in colors other than gold. In South Africa, sports are held on a higher plane. Perhaps the very act of denying this nation the right to compete with the rest of the world has created in South Africans a heightened regard for the things they cannot have.

What they do have, at every turn, is the back of sports’ hand.

“Since 1960, total isolation; there was disappointment in South Africa as you have never seen before,” said Johan Du Plessis, President of the South African National Olympic Committee. “Because of our climate and because of our inheritance, we are so sports-inclined. Sport is part and parcel of the daily life of a South African.

“You must remember that all over South Africa, international competition is the motivation behind everything. The ability and the possibility of a tour to the outside world is something that stimulates a sport and it grows. This is applicable not only to white people, but also to the blacks, Indian and the colored.”

At first, sports officials scrambled to offer athletes something to compensate for what they were missing. They organized the South African Games--a multi-sport, multinational competition--on the theory that if South Africa couldn’t go to the world, the world could be brought to South Africa. The last South African Games, in 1973, marked the last time the country has played host to an international multisport competition.

SPORTS AND POLITICS: An Intimate Relationship

It is popular to speak of “the marriage of sports and politics” in the context of contemporary international sports. Adolf Hitler and Jimmy Carter surely had political agendas in mind that eventually affected the Olympic Games of 1936 and 1980. And so it has been, almost since the Games’ inception. Recent history shows, however, that the world learned many of these lessons at South Africa’s knee.

“The people who married sports and politics were South Africans,” said Jannie Momberg, a member of Parliament from the liberal Democratic party and a former official in South Africa’s track and field federation. “This country has banned Japanese jockeys because they were nonwhite. We have a long, long list of government and politics and sport being placed together here. We are the last to complain.”

South Africa has meddled time and again in another nation’s business when it came to the preservation of the racial purity of South African sports. South African sports officials have demanded rosters of visiting teams to root out unwelcome nonwhite players. South African sports officials have told teams they must not bring black athletes, even classifying an entire Brazilian soccer team as mixed-race and therefore unacceptable.

The popular expression here among anti-government organizers is this: No normal sport in an abnormal society.

The hard-liners require from athletes a strict sacrifice for the cause: No participation in any government-sponsored event or program.

Given the extent of government presence in almost any endeavor in South Africa, that places off-limits nearly every sporting opportunity, including school sports and club sports, unless they are non-racial.

And since the anti-apartheid movement here can ill afford to organize and provide alternative equipment, coaches, facilities and transportation of their own, the children are left with nothing. Sometimes the athlete who decides to compete anyway is given a harsh lesson in the realpolitik of sports in South Africa.

Mark Plaatjes, the former South African marathon champion, was twice threatened with necklacing, a brutal form of township punishment reserved for “collaborators” in which a tire is placed around the victim’s neck, doused with gasoline and set afire.

Plaatjes, who is colored, was singled out because he was a high-profile nonwhite and because he wanted to run. To do so in South Africa meant competing for the South African Amateur Athletic Assn., the only body sponsoring track and field.

“What I object to is, they don’t offer any alternative,” Plaatjes said of the anti-apartheid sports groups. Because of the increased threats against him and his family, Plaatjes sought political asylum in the United States and has applied for citizenship.

“They tell athletes they must not compete because that will be seen as supporting the government,” Plaatjes said. “Fine, but they offer no form of competition themselves. Athletes want to express themselves and they have a finite time to do so. These people say, ‘Wait until things are better.’ I think that is harmful to nonwhite athletes in South Africa. Why not compete and show the whites how good we are?”

An underlying philosophy of the boycott is that sports offer diversion from the drudgery of daily life, a brief escape from reality. The sports boycott seeks to force the white South Africans to face the reality in their country. Another way to view boycotts is to understand that the majority of South Africans are boycotted daily by their own government.

Apartheid’s grand scheme of “separateness” of races has been realized to such a degree that any joining together has at times seemed impossible.

However, in South Africa, the love of sport has often taken precedence over the rule of law.

Harsh and restrictive apartheid laws were often ignored when applied to sportsmen. Parliament has amended some laws to allow mixing in sport. For example, black athletes arriving from overseas would normally be subject to laws restricting their freedom to move about the country and stay where they wish. That was circumvented by the granting of “honorary white” status to nonwhite athletes for the duration of their stay.

A solution to the problem of housing foreign athletes was to designate certain hotels as “international hotels,” where whites and nonwhites would be allowed to mix. This solution eased tension among foreign business travelers, too.

The Group Areas Act, which separated the country into racial zones, was amended to allow mixing not only on the field at an athletic event, but also among spectators, which had been forbidden by law.

Before the Pass Laws were rescinded, nonwhites were required to carry at all times a passport-sized booklet that contained the proper papers permitting them to be in an all-white area. During that time, if blacks ran in a marathon whose course went through an all-white area, the black runner was required to pin a photocopied page of his pass to his running uniform or be subject to arrest.

Even with the changes announced by President Frederik W. de Klerk in February, apartheid remains and prevents nonwhite South Africans from having access to some public facilities. The Separate Amenities Act has legislated the strict segregation of buses, theaters and libraries, for example. Sports and recreation facilities are common sites for segregation.

Recently, most public beaches were opened to blacks. Previously, a black was allowed to be on a white beach only as a nursemaid to a white child. The Separate Amenities Act was the law the Dutch Reformed Church used to permit blacks to enter its churches to clean them, but not to pray in them.

Not all public pools are integrated. In Pretoria, the seat of the national government, the city only two months ago allowed nonwhites to fish for the first time at Rietvlei Dam. Even that decision was met with vigorous opposition.

Since the release in February of jailed black leader Nelson Mandela, the political climate in South Africa has been highly charged. So, too, has been the climate for negotiations in sports. The recent political changes have made all the issues more urgent, and sports officials here believe that they, at last, may have some momentum. However, never before has the situation been so delicate.

THE ISSUE: People, not Pawns

Bessie Windell coaches a track and field team in Pretoria. While keeping one eye on her charges before a meet one night recently, she listed the difficulties of coaching athletes who can never go anywhere to compete.

“To keep them going and motivated is really hard,” she said. “They never have any competition. My attitude is to never run them against anyone in practice, only (against) the watch. That way they can learn to push themselves.

“I must tell you, whenever I get an athlete who can make it, really make it, I have two feelings at once. First, I am excited, because this is what a coach works for. Then, I am sad. I know they will never get the competition, they can never go to the Olympics. They are not allowed. This is the way we have in South Africa. It is the hard way.”

The frustration is evident in nearly every athlete and coach. Myrtle Bothma, ranked No. 1 in the world this season in the 400-meter hurdles, has still not quietly accepted her plight. Bothma, who is white, echoes the popular sentiment from athletes--why hold us responsible for a political system we can do nothing about?

“I don’t see how hurting me, not allowing me to run against the best 400-meter hurdlers in the world, is going to help anything,” she said. “If they don’t want the white sportsmen to take part, why don’t they take the black man? We would love to see it.

“You get a feeling, a kind of anger towards people who sit around a table in their little suits and look at a little bit of paper and say, ‘South Africa, no.’ They don’t know what it’s like to be a sportsman, to struggle, to work. They can decide my future.

“One day, I wish I was a fly with a sting. I could sit in that boardroom with the (International Olympic Committee) in their meeting. When they decide not to let South Africa compete, I would give them one sting, to make them think what are they doing. I think they see the issue as something on a piece of paper, not people.”

CHRONOLOGY Important Dates in South Africa Sports History

* 1956--The International Table Tennis Federation expels the all-white South African Table Tennis Union.

* 1960--South Africa fields a team in the Olympics for what turns out to be the last time. The team is all-white.

* 1962--South Africa is invited to the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.

* 1964--South Africa’s Olympic invitation is withdrawn because the government refuses to send an integrated team.

* 1968--Several countries threaten to boycott the Mexico City Olympics if South Africa is present.

* 1970--South Africa is expelled from the International Olympic Committee.

* 1972--African nations threaten to boycott the Munich Olympics if white-ruled Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) is allowed to compete. Rhodesian athletes, already in the Olympic village, are sent home.

* 1973--After twice being denied a visa, tennis player Arthur Ashe is given government permission to visit South Africa.

* 1976--Twenty-seven African nations boycott the Montreal Olympics because a New Zealand rugby team competed in South Africa.

* 1976--Acting upon a resolution proposed by the Soviet Union, the International Amateur Athletic Federation votes to expel South Africa, a founding member.

* 1977--Leaders of the Commonwealth of Nations meet and adopt the Gleneagles Agreement, in which the countries vow to discourage sporting contact with South Africa.

* 1978--African nations threaten a boycott of the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada, again because of a touring New Zealand rugby team.

* 1981--The United Nations Centre Against Apartheid begins publication of a “blacklist” of athletes who compete in South Africa. The first list contains the names of 165 athletes from 16 countries.

* 1986--The World Boxing Assn. suspends South Africa’s membership.

* July 1986--British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to impose economic sanctions against South Africa results in 32 nations boycotting the Commonwealth Games at Edinburgh.

* 1988--The IOC establishes a Committee on Apartheid in Olympism.

* August 1989--The IOC rules at a session in Puerto Rico that any athlete who competes in South Africa will be stripped of Olympic eligibility.

* September 1989--IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch meets with representatives of the South African National Olympic Committee (SANOC).

* October 1989--IOC Vice President Keba Mbaye of Kenya meets with representatives of the SANOC.

* January 1990--Nigeria warns of a boycott of the Commonwealth Games in Auckland, New Zealand, because of a rebel British cricket tour of South Africa.

* February 1990--The IOC hears a report on the status of change in South African sports.