It has been both gut-wrenching and very heart-warming to watch the sporting world respond to the principles raised by the Black Lives Matter movement.
In South Africa, virtually overnight, the hidden shame of discrimination and what amounts to baaskap across sporting codes bubbled to the surface. Players, ex-players and coaches of colour finally had license to speak the uncomfortable truth.
They spoke not just for themselves, but all those whose God-given talents have never been developed because of the colour of their skin.
When rugby player Chiliboy Ralepelle, whose career has been blighted by doping bans, recently spoke of being pushed into the Springbok team aged just 19, and then pushed into the captaincy a few months later, it was a story without a happy ending. One could sense the pressure he felt to push himself further.
His career never reached the heights it should have because the rugby bosses of the time didn't give a damn about him.
Just as they wouldn't have given a damn about Cheslin Kolbe had Rassie Erasmus not been appointed Springbok coach.
When former cricketer Makhaya Ntini, who represented South Africa with distinction, shared that he had chosen to run between the team hotel and stadium to avoid the discomfort of sitting on the bus, because he didn't feel accepted by his team-mates, he spoke for many of us.
I salute former Proteas cricketer and current Cobras coach Ashwell Prince, who recently tweeted: "The system is broken and has been for some time in our beloved SA, both in society and in sport. We return from isolation and we say to the world, 'look at us, we're back, oh by the way, there's still no black people who can play the game, but we brought a few along'."
Prince knows the drill. He has been a successful player and coach. He should be coaching South Africa today but Cricket South Africa has undergone an anti-transformation revolution; there's been a clean-out and all the new appointees are white!
It was great to see the players and administrators taking the knee for discrimination against black people when cricket recently resumed from its coronavirus break. Only they will know if their hearts were in it. They included some of the same people on the bus Ntini chose not to board.
South Africans understand sport's power to unite. We've felt it several times, from the 1995 to the 2019 Rugby World, not forgetting the African Cup of Nations trophy and hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Last year's World Cup victory, and victory parade, were particularly special because it felt, for the first time, that we had assembled a team representative of all our people. And nobody could argue that among the best of the best players, were players of colour.
We are a nation of champions; imagine what we could achieve if we stopped feeling threatened by and undermining each other.
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