Demographics
From 1990 to 1991 the legal apparatus of apartheid was abolished, and in 1992 the Springboks were readmitted to international rugby. The history of discrimination and the high profile association of rugby union with the apartheid era could not, however, be dismissed at a stroke of a pen and the issue of race remains very sensitive post-apartheid in South African rugby. Somewhat ironically, racial classification has become an important part of the attempt to open up the sport and provide opportunities for the previously disadvantaged. Various rugby competitions are now required to operate racial quotas whereby a specified number of each team must be non-white. The Sport and Recreation Amendment Bill was tabled in Parliament in 2007 and provided that sports federations would be compelled to supply government with a racial demographic breakdown of their membership in order to qualify for state funding.
Quotas have not however officially been applied to the national Springbok team, but there has been increasing frustration at the lack of elite black players resulting in growing political pressure. A number of MPs of the African National Congress (the governing party), including the influential Parliamentary Sports Committee chairman Butana Khompela, have called for powers for the government to influence the selection of national teams. In July 2006, Springbok coach Jake White told the press he had been unable to pick certain white players for his squad "because of transformation" - a reference to the ANC government’s policies of requiring racial selection in attempting to redress the racial imbalances in national sport. Prior to the 2007 World Cup, Butana Komphela gave an interview in which he suggested that passports would be confiscated if the Springbok team was not "representative" i.e. did not have a racial make up representative of the demographics of South Africa (the white part of the South African population amounts to approximately 8% (4 million) of the national population but dominated the 2007 World Cup winning squad).
Minister of Sport Makhenkesi Stofile has been a vocal critic of the Springboks lack of "representivity" and the slow rate of "transformation", and was widely expected to be the driving force behind the campaign to appoint a black coach for the 2008 season who would be expected to give preference to black players. Jake White's contract as the coach of the Springboks expires at the end of December 2007.
The presence of only two coloured players in the winning team's starting line-up, 13 years after the end of white minority rule, has led to a new bout of soul-searching about how to ensure the progress of more black players. However, the debate may however be moving away from quotas and transformation. The failure to develop sport at school level is one of the country's biggest mistakes, President Thabo Mbeki said in Pretoria where he was handed the Webb Ellis Cup by the Springboks following their World Cup victory against England. "We don't put sufficient development in sports and we haven't committed resources needed and this is one of our biggest mistakes". He said development needed to be built from below. Sports and Recreation Minister Makhenkesi Stofile recently emphasised the development of talent, ruled out racial quotas for national teams pointing out that this resulted merely in window dressing for international consumption, as a failed experiment in South African rugby showed a few years ago.
However the issue remains politically fraught. Although a survey by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has showed that only a slim majority of the population favoured racial quotas in national sports teams, there were still strong racial disparities in the level of support for quotas. The survey found that black South Africans were more than four times as supportive of quotas compared to the white population.
Read more about this topic: Rugby Union In South Africa