Rugby officials are already talking up the prospect of the first overseas tour by the Springbok national team since 1981. Last month Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu voiced support for a partial removal of the boycott in sports already desegregated inside South Africa. And this week South Africa may take a first step toward re-entry into the Olympic community at a meeting in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare between South African sports officials and representatives of African national Olympic committees. Not since the 1960 Summer Games in Rome has South Africa appeared at an Olympiad.
A suspension of the sports boycott could slow the erosion of de Klerk’s popularity among white voters. They have abandoned the ruling National Party by the thousands since the legalization of the African National Congress and release of Nelson Mandela. But many diehard segregationists are also rabid rugby fans who long to see the Springboks take on the sport’s longtime top dogs, the All-Blacks of New Zealand. For whites “sport is an almost mystical experience,” says Kader Asmal, an ANC official and legal adviser to the South African Non Racial Olympic Committee. “Taking part in a [cricket] test match or a world [championship] rugby match is much more important than the re-establishment of . . . relations with other countries.”
Obscure legacies: South Africa’s isolation will not end without approval from the and sports organizations sympathetic to it. ANC officials have conditioned consent on several factors, from proof that political change is “irreversible” to the creation of multiracial governing bodies in each sport. Among apartheid’s more obscure legacies is the existence of rival white and nonwhite bodies in rugby, cricket, tennis, basketball, boxing and track and field. “There is change,” says Moss Mashishi of the National Olympics and Sports Congress, “but it has not been sufficient.”
As the most popular team sport among blacks, soccer could be the first to benefit from a selective rollback, perhaps even in time for elimination matches that will decide which African teams journey to the United States for the 1994 World Cup. As for the Olympics, most officials do not expect to see South Africa take part until the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta. “It’s better to wait and not expect anything,” says Zane Moosa. “But . . . you want to play at the highest level and see how you fare.” Nelson Mandela, once an accomplished boxer, would readily understand that.
