South Africa Expected to Rejoin the IOC Today

The International Olympic Committee is expected to announce today an end to South Africa’s 30 years of isolation and formally readmit the country to the family of sporting nations, according to sports officials in South Africa.

The decision, which has been shepherded through international debate by the persistence of IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, is expected to be made at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switerzerland. A five-person delegation from South Africa will meet with IOC officials today.

“I believe, and we anticipate, that Samaranch will announce that South Africa will be readmitted to the IOC on July 9, in time for Barcelona,” Joe Stutzen, president of the South African track and field federation, told The Times in a telephone interview from Johannesburg. “That’s a very widespread belief.”

As the pace of political reform in South Africa has accelerated--the South African Parliament last month struck down the last legal vestiges of apartheid, a system of racial separation--so, too has the mood grown more favorable for South Africa’s return to the IOC and international sport.

Said one South African Olympic official last week, “We would hate to preempt (an announcement), but the signals are there for everyone to see.”

While today’s announcement may pave the way for South Africa to compete in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, prospects are that the country’s first return to Olympic competition will come in the 1992 Winter Games at the Albertville, France.

One winter sport administrator said from Pretoria that South Africa could be expected to field a small team to the Winter Games.

The official is confident South Africa will attend, even though the deadline for invitations to Albertville has passed.

Samaranch has already shown some flexibility on the issue of Olympic invitations, having said last month that he would be willing to extend the deadline for South Africa’s participation in the Summer Games should it become necessary.

Since fielding an all-white team at the 1960 Rome Olympics, South Africa has not been allowed to compete in Olympic Games. Its Olympic Committee, which was founded in 1907, was expelled from the IOC in 1970, effectively banning South Africa from any international competition. In addition, most world sporting bodies have prohibited their athletes from competing in South Africa.

Since then, IOC leaders have told the South Africans that the only acceptable avenue for the nation’s return would be one that does not include the apartheid system, which since 1948 has denied even the most basic civil rights to the country’s black majority.

South African sports officials claim they have done their part to appease the IOC, pointing to integration of most formerly all-white sports bodies. It is estimated that 97 of the country’s 126 sports bodies have unified into one, non-racial organization.

But it took the work of politicians to finish the job to the IOC’s satisfaction. And the powerful international sporting body now appears ready to deliver on its promise to readmit South Africa. Samaranch has made little secret of his wish to have South Africa compete in the 1992 Olympic Games.

“The whole reading of the situation is that Samaranch very much wants South Africa back in the Olympics, especially in his hometown of Barcelona,” said Kevin Reynolds, president of the South African Ice Skating Assn.

Samaranch sent Reynolds a letter dated June 25, in which the IOC president wrote that “the end of South Africa’s long and winding path before readmission to international sports is almost reached.”

Reynolds said of the letter: “I would say it was certainly foreshadowing (today’s) meeting.”

A further signal of the IOC’s intention to readmit South Africa came last month when the body gave Samaranch and the IOC executive board the power to grant South Africa readmission.

Also on the IOC agenda this week is the issue of the Baltic states, which on Monday pleaded their case for recognition independent of the Soviet Union.

Representatives from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia told IOC officials that they will refuse to compete under the Soviet flag. They offered to march under the IOC flag in Barcelona.

The IOC’s decision to readmit South Africa might lead to an avalanche of similar announcements from international governing bodies of individual sports. Many appear poised to readmit non-racial South African sports organizations.

“Most federations that we’ve been in touch with are ready to readmit us,” said Lappe Laubscher of the South African National Olympic Committee. “We believe that once the IOC makes its announcement, the walls will come tumbling down.”

The first wall might fall in track and field. The president of the International Amateur Athletic Federation--the world governing body--has indicated for months that a South African team is expected to compete at the World Championships at Tokyo in August.

That will require a two-thirds vote of the IAAF Congress, which will convene Aug. 19, only a few days before the start of the championships. According to IAAF President Primo Nebiolo, that vote will be little more than a formality.

“I don’t have the votes in my pocket,” he said last month, “but I am sure the answer will be yes.”

Track and field officials in South Africa are publicly cautious, but privately they have begun the job of readying a team and making some of the logistic decisions necessary to mobilize a full delegation. Such is their confidence of participating in Tokyo that an 18-person coaching staff has been designated to accompany the South African team, should it be invited.

“It’s certain that on August 19 in Tokyo, South Africa will be reelected to the IAAF,” said Stutzen, the South African track and field federation president.

Track and field probably is the federation most ready to readmit the South Africans, who were founding members of the IAAF. An IAAF delegation last weekend left South Africa with a draft constitution for the new South African Amateur Athletic Assn. And Monday, Nebiolo announced he has received from the SAAAA a formal request for readmittance to the IAAF, which banned South Africa in 1976.

Already the creaky doors to sport have opened in South Africa. Last weekend a group of Soviet ice skaters--led by Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, the 1988 Olympic pairs champions--finished a tour of South Africa, sponsored by the African National Congress.

Wincing at his own pun, Reynolds of the South African Ice Skating Assn. noted the thawing of international public opinion: “See how sport is breaking the ice.”