For Better or Worse, They Seek Freedom

In the few cases of South Africa’s sports defections on record, such as Zola Budd gaining British citizenship in time for the 1984 Olympics, South Africans have reacted with mixed emotions.

The knowledgeable sporting public views such an athlete as merely taking one of the few roads open to international competition. To others, leaving South Africa is the ultimate betrayal.

“It’s like watching traitorous rats jumping off a sinking ship,” said one sports official of this often-tried but seldom-successful route.

Many believe that even if an athlete leaves and becomes a citizen of another country, that athlete will always be South African. Others are sure that the athletes will come running back home, as Budd did.

In the case of black middle-distance runner Sydney Maree, who became a U.S. citizen and a two-time Olympian, even though he no longer lives in South Africa, his career is followed with great interest. Newspapers refer to Maree as being from Pretoria, as if he had never left.

South African athletes, if they choose to compete anywhere in the world, are forced by international bans to leave their country and get citizenship elsewhere. There are only a few ways to accomplish this.

Frith van der Merwe, South Africa’s best distance runner and perhaps the best female ultra-distance runner in the world, has a rather extreme idea of how to accomplish it. Van der Merwe is prepared to get married--perhaps to a total stranger--in order to change her citizenship.

There isn’t much that Van der Merwe, 25, hasn’t achieved in South African running. She is the women’s national marathon champion and record holder at 2 hours 27 minutes, the 15- and 50-kilometer champion and women’s winner of the country’s most prestigious race, the 52-kilometer Comrades.

Van der Merwe would seem to have everything South Africa has to offer its isolated athletes. She is extremely popular, especially in her hometown of Benoni, 20 miles west of Johannesburg. Her good looks give her unlimited endorsement potential. Van der Merwe makes an excellent living running, aided by her university education and thoughtful approach to training.

Yet van der Merwe, who has never been out of South Africa, is obsessed with leaving it.

“I have found that I don’t have much competition left in this country,” she said. “The big thing with running is that you need a goal. You can’t just train every day and wait for someone to beat you and then you beat them. No one beats me. I actually go to road races now and I think, ‘Ach, I am running against the same people again and again and again.’ I definitely need new stimulation.

“(At races) I find people at the side of the road no longer telling me that I’m the first lady to go by. Now they say, ‘You’re 10th,’ or whatever. They don’t even compare me to women. It makes it quite hard for me because I am competing against men.”

Van der Merwe has considered--and rejected--most of the conventional means of escaping South Africa’s sports isolation.

“I’m very clearly a South African,” she said. “Van der Merwe is the most popular Afrikaans surname in the country, even though I am not an Afrikaner.

“Going to school in the States is not an option. I’ve already gone to university. I had an option to get a false passport. Going to Swaziland to get citizenship takes too long and costs a lot.

“My other option, of course, is to marry someone out of the country, and I would do that. I’ve had a couple of offers. I’ve got friends overseas who would do it for me.”

Van der Merwe understands that such a marriage of convenience would not be taken well in her conservative homeland.

“It isn’t a small thing,” she said. “When someone first suggested it to me, I was absolutely shocked. I thought, ‘How could I possibly do something like that?’ When I talk to my father, I can see he opposes it.

“If I had to go overseas, (though,) I know my family would support me fully. Even if I marry out of convenience, they would back me as well. Running overseas is my biggest aim. If I have to sacrifice a lot, I am going to do that.”

Van der Merwe has not told her thoughts of marriage to reporters in South Africa. She spoke earnestly and betrayed not a little frustration at the plight she shares with other South African athletes who are desperate to compete against the best in the world.

“I oppose apartheid, it must be abolished,” she said. “We athletes are all in the same boat here, black and white. I don’t think the political situation in this country is going to change very quickly, even if it’s getting better.

“I’m at my peak now. I can’t let my years pass by. I haven’t got time to wait for them to solve the political problems. I just want to compete internationally, and I’ll do anything to be able to do it.”