The Impact of Sporting Forces on South African Apartheid

In: Journal of sport and social issues: the official journal of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society, Volume 3, Issue 1, p. 33-42

Abstract

The South African government's discriminatory policy of apartheid has caused tremendous external, as well as internal, pressures to develop in an effort to reverse its in humane treatment of its repressed populace. None of the pressures have been more forceful than those evoked by the sporting world and the United Nations. In recent years, these forces have virtually eliminated South Africa from most international sports com petitions, including the Olympic Games. A number of recent events seem to indicate that a new policy and perhaps attitudinal posture in regard to sport and apartheid may be formulating, a process which may permit sport to shape its own destiny. Time, however, is of the essence not only in regard to equal opportunity and availability in regard to sport, but in South Africa's all-encompassing racially repressive apartheid practices. It appears that unless the South African govern ment initiates swift apartheid extirpation as appears to be occurring in sport, the adage that "He who hesitates is lost" may prevail!