Netball quotas described as ‘morally appalling’

Quotas in netball have been described as “morally appalling” and unconstitutional after a local team was disqualified for fielding too many African players.

Elize Kotze, former Proteas netball team coach, said she knew the feeling too well.

“The heartbreak on the faces of those players broke my heart. Some of them travelled so far to get to that point.”

Kotze said the decision by officials to dock points from the Sunbirds in the recent Telkom Netball League semifinals goes against every grain of sportsmanship.

“We are used to being penalised for a team being made up out of too many white players, I really didn’t expect this,” Kotze said.

“I know Theresa Rossouw well, she is one of the purest netball souls out there.”

Kotze said before Rossouw started coaching the Sunbirds team in Mpumalanga, they never featured anywhere in the big leagues. Over the weekend, Solidarity issued a letter to Netball SA that threatened the federation with legal action should it not renounce its rules about the racial composition of players on the field at a given moment.

The letter follows after the Sunbirds netball team lost their place in the final in the Telkom Netball League on 25 October because the team had “too few white players” during the match. Similar scenarios had occurred at the National Netball Championships in recent years, with teams forfeiting points for not including enough white players.

“This is plainly ridiculous. South Africa is already the most racially regulated country in the world, but there is just about no sphere of society where the interference comes nearly as close as that of Netball SA,” Hennie Bierman, head of the Solidarity Guilds said in a recent press release.

“The idea that there are race referees who have to continuously ensure that teams maintain an artificial and unfair race quota, is not only completely contrary to international norms, but it is in particular also morally appalling,” Bierman said.

“We must fight this for the sake of justice; for the sake of all who are in the profession; for the sake of younger generations who have to grow up in a society where they are taught that it is normal for someone to tell you that you may not be on the field at that particular stage because of your skin colour.

“And we must fight this for the sake of those who simply want to practice the sport because they love it and for whom it is a respite from the gulf of politics that is increasingly taking over our lives,” Bierman said.

Daniel Silke, a political analyst, warned South Africa should be careful not to fall into the trap of reintroducing bureaucratic racial quotas in terms of quotas in sport.

“The state should avoid interfering in sporting bodies,” Silke said.

Another political analyst, Ralph Mathekga, said the reason why there was a quota in the South African sport industry was because the country lacked a common vision.

“It is an indication of a lack of democracy represented in the numbers,” Mathekga said.

He said the quotas were useful if South Africa wanted to transform the institution. “For example, you cannot have a woman’s institution run by 60% of men. That is a lack of democracy in an institutional culture that the value system represents in the constitution.”

He said those that deny or hate the quota system are what is lacking in the country’s transformation. Ronald Peters from Solidarity told The Citizen the organisation was in contact with Sunbirds coach Rossouw.

“She attended a meeting yesterday with SA netball to discuss what happened,” Peters said.

He said the organisation was looking at how it could support Rossouw.

“Our feeling about this is simple, quotas impacts the quality of sport negatively.”

Netball South Africa (NSA) spokesperson Nnusi Gazi confirmed the meeting between Netball SA, Rossouw, and other stakeholders. Representatives of the national federation said they were unable to comment yesterday, however, on the results of the meeting.

– marizkac@ citizen.co.za

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