Butana Komphela and Arendse: Mutiny on the bounty

You put the slime in the coconut — you drink it all up … Sports and recreation portfolio committee chairperson Butana Komphela has demanded that any players who rose up against Norman Arendse’s insistence that the cricket squad to Bangladesh be more in line with transformation be given their marching orders.

Once again I feel compelled to explain why quotas and tokens are the enemy of transformation.

Simply put, South Africa’s three major sports are receiving billions in terms of sponsorships, television deals and the many other streams of income available to them.

Despite South Africa having been a multiracial democracy for 14 years, a trickle — if that — of this money is finding its way to the youth of this country. The overwhelming bulk is going to the usual suspects.

Soccer has already owned up, and rugby and cricket will soon have to follow.

Millions and millions of our youngsters, of which the overwhelming majority are black, are not benefiting from the wealth of this country’s sporting bounty.

If we allow Komphela, Arendse and the like to demand quotas, then they can tell us that transformation has been achieved. How? By showing black faces in our sports team while telling us that we must accept defeat while “transformation kicks in”. In reality, had they spent the money, we’d be drowning in competition from the wealth of black talent going untapped.

It’s exactly the opposite effect: if they aren’t forced to explain why the money is not finding its way to the grassroots and why we aren’t seeing an abundance of black talent coming through because the teams look transformed, then they can go on making token amounts available to development.

If they are forced to explain the real reason why the demographics of this country aren’t translating into numbers in our national teams, then the real crime will emerge: failure to spend the money on development.

Of course, failure to acquire the sports television rights for the national broadcaster where most of our black youth follow sport is a shining example of this. Why waste all that money when we have overseas trips, functions and all the other unnecessary garbage to fund? I’m sure the kids of Mamelodi are happy to mortgage their future in order to fund all the outrageous spending by administrators. How about that R7-million that went missing from cricket’s coffers? I’m sure that could have bought the kids in Soweto a few pitches and equipment. Instead we have to hear how it was spent during a trial in the commercial crimes court.

Well, Mr Komphela, on the return of the Proteas from their tour from Bangladesh, while you are demanding the heads of our sporstmen, I will be demanding that the books of the three major sports of this country be laid open for inspection. Also, all administrators must make available their personal expenses and the income they earn from their positions within those bodies — I include you and your committee, of course.

By the way, as head of a sports body I plan to spend a bit of time asking your “valued” panel about sportsmen and -women who represent our country. You guys must be steeped in sporting knowledge — I know you’ve steeped in something because this thing stinks to hell.

In addition, I want an audited account of the money reaching the youth of our country and a comparison made with the amounts going to administrators and other useless nogshleppers.

How dare you say that sport is the great unifier of the people of this country while preaching disgraceful racism under the guise of transformation?

Start to deploy our assets where we want them — at the grassroots — and put your disgusting racist views where the sun doesn’t shine.

As South Africans, it is time to demand that the crime of the century be exposed. What happened to our lost generation of young sportsmen while the administrators were partying?