For 30 Years, Nation Holds Itself Hostage : Apartheid: Country has made strides, but can’t re-enter world sports stage with separatist policy.

Why anyone would care about sports in South Africa, a country flirting simultaneously with democracy and anarchy, is a good question. Surely, the officials attempting to hold the country together have more pressing concerns.

This is understood. So why, then, do politicians here come back again and again to the plight of the athletes of South Africa, who ask: When will we become acceptable enough to the world sports community to be let back in?

Maybe it is because every day, in offices and schools and bars and clubs, South Africans of all colors talk about sports; they debate and even come to blows about sports. And as sports is a mirror of society, so does society mirror sports. This color-conscious land is peopled with fans who fall in along color lines: Blacks love soccer, Afrikaners love rugby and English-speaking whites love cricket.

If only every issue in South Africa were so simple.

The biggest problem facing South African sports officials is how to get back into the Olympic movement. The problems are not simple, and many of the solutions are out of the hands of sports officials and in the hands of South Africa’s legislators.

After three decades of boycotts and isolation, South Africa wants back. It wants to be friends again. South African sports officials have tried everything. They have lobbied. They have hovered in hotel coffee shops. They have attended conventions and congresses and meetings to which they have not been invited, and smile even when delegates walk briskly past.

“We go to all the (International Amateur Athletic Federation) meetings, but no one will meet with us,” said Gert le Roux, director of the South African Amateur Athletic Union. “We are never welcome, and some of these people used to be our friends. After a while, we become embarrassed by hanging about in hotel lobbies.”

The snubs are difficult to swallow. Professor J.S. Vermaak, President of the South African Rugby Board, explained that while South Africa is still a founding member of the International Rugby Football Union, the country is effectively banned.

“Every year, South Africa is on the schedule,” he said. “Every year, no one comes.”

In their search for acceptance, sports officials even placed a “sports ambassador” from South Africa in London.

Eddie Barlow was one of South Africa’s best cricket players when he was sent on a three-year stint to England to direct South Africa’s sports office there. His mandate: Promote South African sport internationally and let the world know how integrated it was.

Barlow came back to South Africa in 1987 a disillusioned man. He said the job was nearly impossible, especially with the fast-growing international anti-apartheid lobby.

In his contacts with sports officials, Barlow said he made a significant discovery: The sporting world was not anti-South Africa, it was anti-apartheid. He transmitted this message many times to sports officials in South Africa, and it was their lack of response that drove him to quit.

“If sports administrators continue to wrap themselves up in political ideologies, and believe that South Africa is right and the rest of the world is wrong, then they shouldn’t cry if we remain isolated,” he said.

“The name of the game is upholding human rights, not playing political power games. Doors will open if we abandon apartheid as a repressive and political tool--that’s the chance our sporting friends abroad are asking for.”

Since the begining of South Africa’s isolation, the intent of the world’s sporting bodies was to pressure politicians through sport. Since the beginning, South African officials believed they could withstand the pressure, and the world sporting community believed the pressure would work. Both appear to have been correct.

Clearly, three decades of sports boycotts have brought about change in South Africa, not only in sports but also in society as a whole. It is equally clear that the very relic the boycotts meant to cast out still remains in place--apartheid has been chipped at since 1948, but it remains one symbolic wall that hasn’t been brought down.

So, there has been some change and some resistance. South African sports officials today find themselves holding onto a taut line with no more to give either way.

“In the early days, they really thought they would be able to overcome all the pressure from the world. I think that was the big mistake they made in the past.” said Johan du Plessis, president of the South African National Olympic Committee. “That (mistake) was, from our side, matching up with Europe and maybe America, that (coalition) would be strong enough against Africa. They didn’t realize the whole thing was going to turn in favor of Africa. Africa took over the United Nations, the IOC.”

Agonizing over missed opportunities doesn’t help solve problems--even if the mistakes are grave, such as South Africa’s snubbing of its neighbor nations in favor of “white” countries in which it felt more kinship. Now, in an era of reconciliation, African countries are not in the mood to overlook past slights--or present conditions.

But the delicate relationship with the rest of Africa is crucial to South Africa’s future in the Olympic movement, for Olympic officials have made it clear that the way back for South Africa must wind through Africa.

Two workmen are sitting in a tin shed by the Eastbank Hall swimming pool in Alexandra, waiting for the delivery of paint for the bottom of the pool. They have been waiting for two weeks. When the pool was built, the wrong paint was used, and ever since it hasn’t been right. Sometimes someone comes by with some paint for the pool, but it isn’t right, either.

So, here in the middle of South Africa’s summer, the only pool in this black township is closed.

Alexandra’s best soccer field was partially covered with brown grass and potholes because residents weren’t able to water, resod or bring in equipment to grade it.

Soweto, with a population of 2.5 million, relies largely on its schools to provide sports facilities for the black children. It is a faint hope, however, in a country where schools are segregated and the government spends five times more money to educate its white children than its black.

“They are telling you lies abroad,” said a community activist in Soweto who would give only his first name, Rapu. “They tell you our facilities are equal. You can see they are not. South Africa belongs to all who are in it. We must work to make a country for all the people. Sport has a significant role to play. But there are priorities. You can’t have a society that has thousands of sports facilities when you have people who are not healthy enough to play the sports.”

Rapu is fully behind the sports boycotts, even though he acknowledges that black South Africans are doubly punished: They are not allowed free and open competition within South Africa, and, as South Africans, they are not allowed to compete against the rest of the world.

There is an argument advancing the notion that rather than stifling sports in South Africa, those who seek to bring about political change ought to encourage sports and nourish them. This argument holds that the interaction among races that sports bring, the camaraderie it engenders, is a far more effective tool to bring people together than laws and edicts.

Jannie Momberg, a Member of Parliament from the Democratic party, agrees with this view and says that in South Africa, sports has another role.

“I would say that sport has been used by the South African government as a kite--to see which way the wind was blowing in the country,” he said. “If it worked in sports, they put it in place elsewhere in society.”

This kite is difficult to fly in a wind so strong that it seeks to bring it down. However, in the last year, three historic meetings took place that may have changed the direction of the anti-South African wind.

On Sept. 11, Johan du Plessis and J.B. du Plessis, the director of the South African National Olympic Committee, met in Lausanne, Switzerland, with Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee. The topic: How to get South Africa back into the Olympic movement.

Samaranch explained that for South Africa to get back, it must work through its continent--only the IOC members from Africa will be able to help South Africa. “If they accept you, the rest of the world will accept you,” Samaranch said.

Events moved swiftly. On Oct. 11, the Du Plessises (they are unrelated) met with Judge Keba Mbaye, an IOC vice president from Senegal. Mbaye told them that Africa was their ticket back, and expected no less than the abolition of apartheid.

That paved the way for a meeting on Jan. 9 in Paris with Sam Ramsamy and Fekrou Kidane, who are advisers to the IOC Commission on Apartheid and Olympism. Ramsamy, in particular, has devoted his life to the anti-apartheid sports movement. The South Africans were excited about the unprecedented meeting.

Obviously, apartheid was singled out as the biggest problem. Another was the IOC’s concern about lack of unity among South African sporting bodies. In some sports, there are five or six governing bodies. The IOC, through Ramsamy, told the SANOC to unify its sports bodies under one umbrella and get rid of any discrimination.

The South Africans came away from the 5 1/2-hour meeting excited about the future for the first time in decades.

“It was the first time we had concrete suggestions,” Johan du Plessis said. “We didn’t talk about politics. We talked about sports. We know what we have to do.”

Some sports administrators here are angry at what they see as the IOC’s selective boycott of South Africa. Ray Moore of the South African Tennis Union said: “Listen, in 1980 the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and the IOC saw fit to hold the Games in the capital city of the invading nation. Where is the line of demarcation? Is there a set of standards for Africa?” Moore said.

“If you want to go into human rights in Africa . . . most of the countries in Africa are governed in tyranny. They have dictators. You have people who have sworn themselves into a presidency or as king for life. Ethiopia . . . what is happening in Ethiopia is unbelievable. And Uganda. They are in the Olympics. They are a respected member of the IOC. This was during a time when Africa was becoming more powerful internationally. They could turn the whole thing the way they wanted it to turn.”

In their excitement about the opening of a dialogue with the IOC, South African officials are overlooking other signs. Last month Samaranch was asked about the possibility of South Africa being readmitted in time for the 1992 Olympics. Samaranch said it would not be possible. And the African nations are no less militant regarding their neighbor to the south.

R ise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number--

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you--

Ye are many--they are few. --Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy

Despite political changes and some historic talks with the IOC, South Africa is no nearer to being readmitted to the international sports community. And while some officials in South Africa are optimistic, others note that only a month ago, Samaranch rejected the notion that South Africa would be back in the IOC. He called the changes “cosmetic.”

Said Momberg: “I’m very negative about being readmitted before South Africa becomes an independent, non-racial democracy. We’ve done a lot in certain areas to integrate, but then we have segregated schools. I would be most amazed if the people in the Olympic movement, after so many years of successfully pressuring South Africa, would give up and say, ‘Come back, all is forgiven.’ ”

One likely scenario for South Africa is for sports to be recognized piecemeal, federation by federation. The IAAF could allow the South African track federation back, for example, the international governing body for swimming could recognize South Africa’s federation, and so on. In this way, South Africans may compete internationally before they compete as a team in the Olympic Games.

South Africa has its friends within the IOC, proof enough that its years of lobbying have not gone to waste. But others have read the IOC charter and see no allowance for a country where apartheid is still the law.

“We are all held hostage by apartheid--the black athletes in South Africa, the white athletes in South Africa,” said Anita De Frantz, a U.S. representative on the IOC. “The black and white athletes in the rest of the world are held hostage by that system. That’s why it must be dismantled.

“Our charter says you cannot discriminate. I don’t know if it’s politics and sports not linking, but it’s part of the rule of the Olympic movement. While it may look to the rest of the world as politics and sport, it’s our charter, it’s our document describing what it takes to be a part of the Olympic family that prohibits them from being a part.

“Of course, the rejoinder is, ‘Well, what about places where there are human rights violations?’ Yes. But this is a country that openly, notoriously, says that on the basis of the color of your skin, your rights are different. It’s just so clear. I use the word open and notorious--there’s just no mistake.”

This, then, is the rope South Africa clings to. Its end is in the isolation of home; the other is in the freedom abroad. South Africa’s inability to pull the rope, or to allow itself to be tugged, has kept this athletic landscape static.

“We have done all we can do,” they say to the world. “Let others compromise.”

While black and white athletes clamor to break free of the borders of South Africa’s exile, sports officials are held hostage by politicians who are held hostage by apartheid.

And so South Africa remains, clenching its fist and stamping a tiny foot against the world.