FIKILE - ITS TIME TO GET OUT OF THE DUGOUT

It has been awhile since Sports Minister Fikile tweeted a real doozie. This time he has given his followers red meat to chew on by claiming that Zapiro's cartoon appearing in The Times (14/4/16) is racist because it depicts the new Springbok coach trying to catch two rugby balls simultaneously - one labeled 'transformation' and the other 'winning'. Fikile ends his tweet with " Zapiro equates Transformation to failure". There is a correlation between the lack of transformation and failure, but it has nothing to do with Fikile's knee jerk, when all else fails, reaction to racism. Fikile has had ample opportunity to implement meaningful solutions to the problem of transformation. Instead he prefers apocryphal tweets to cover-up his department's failure in achieving diversity in sport. The historical transformation narrative is filled with sweeping innuendos ranging from racism, political meddling to racial quota requirements for team selection. They do nothing to advance transformation but rather impede the process. The failure to transform has to do with systemic poverty among the less fortunate in the country. The vast majority of poor young blacks in the townships live in squalor, and what sporting facilities do exist reflect equally squalid conditions. Perhaps the minister will accompany me on a visit to the townships around Cape Town. There he will find sports facilities woefully inadequate, neglected, in disrepair and vandalised. The conditions on cricket and soccer fields are invitations for serious injuries. Amenities, such as change rooms are the exception rather than the rule. The landscapes are treeless and arid - inhospitable and unwelcoming. The causal link between transformation and failure is not racism, but lack of leadership and wasted resources under the minister and his predecessors watch. The solution to meaningful transformation is not an esoteric one. All it requires is for the minister to direct the resources at his disposal to improving the disgraceful sporting conditions that currently exist for disadvantaged youth in the townships. Until then transformation does equate with failure.