SA armchair sport fans have seldom before been as spoiled for choice.
With the Springbok and the Proteas’ men’s teams embroiled in world cup tournaments and the Springbok women primed to take on Scotland in the WXV tier 2 competition, which kicks off in Stellenbosch on Friday, international sport should be providing a welcome distraction from the country’s governance woes.
Pity, then, that SA’s international sports teams face the prospect of losing the right to play under the national flag or play the anthem before games due to yet another example of administrative dysfunction. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) warned last month that SA, along with Bermuda, failed to meet a deadline to comply with its doping code, effective from January 1 2021.
The SA Institute for Drug-Free Sport, as the signatory on the WADA code, says it will lodge an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne in anticipation of the deadline to comply with the code, a global agreement between governments and national sports bodies worldwide. This might grant SA a reprieve.
But compliance should have been simple. All the SA sports ministry had to do was amend the SA Institute for Drug-Free Sport Act of 1997 to comply with the latest version of the WADA code. The government says an amendment bill has been approved by cabinet and must just go through the parliamentary system.
But why only now? It has reached the point where if SA teams triumph it will not be due to the support of the authorities but despite them.
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