Realising the Power of Sport
Nelson Mandela spent a significant part of his life imprisoned on Robbin Island for his strongly committed resistance to the brutal apartheid regime that ruled South Africa.
Apartheid was a system that treated the native black population of the country as if they were less than human and deserving only of the most despicable dominance by the white Afrikaner population.
The African National Congress (ANC) emerged and developed as the institutional embodiment of the struggles of the South African blacks for genuine liberation from the yoke of apartheid.
In his book, The Long Wak to Freedom, Mandela his years of imprisonment, an important document of what life was really like.
Following his freedom and eventual victory at the polls which gave him the presidency of South Africa, Mandela and his new government oversaw South Africa’s hosting of the Rugby World Cup, one of the global community’s major sporting spectacles.
The host country won the Rugby World Cup in grand style before Nelson Mandela’s own eyes. The country’s victory has since become an important historical experience imbued with novel lessons on the power of sport in and on a society.
Mandela himself, already a world renowned political and ideological leader for his dedication to the struggle and eventual dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, became something of a sport leader and philosopher.
Mandela’s comments on the power of sport on society have been amongst the most notable quotations in international sport since they were first uttered. Despite this reality, however, one is not certain that they have had the desired impact at any level. Sport administrators who are perhaps the most likely to quote Mandela on the power of sport have rarely gone on to show, in practical terms, that they have grasped his intent.
We live in a world today where sport has become a major industry, an incredible generator of revenue that has allowed athletes, coaches and their agents to become incredibly rich, only to display, for the most part, the behaviour long associated with the greedy capitalists around the world.
Global sport history
Investigative studies in sport reveals a startling array of contradictions. Perhaps that is to be expected since sport involves people, and we are all so very contradictory in our own personal lives as well as those with whom we come into contact.
Whilst sport emerged in societies everywhere almost as part of nature, the reality reveals that everywhere, the powerful eventually rose to leadership and dictated what it has become, everywhere. This is the reason that in every historical epoch, sport has been defined and re-defined as part of the evolution of societies as they strive to come to terms with their respective inherent social contradictions.
Whilst much credit has been given to Ancient Greece for the origins of the Olympic Movement, sport existed in different civilisations across the world, as continuing archaeological findings reveal, calling old theories into question and forcing a re-thinking and eventual re-writing of history.
A select few have crafted an International Olympic Movement on the foundation of what was considered the Ancient Olympics ignoring, perhaps to our eternal detriment, the contradictions inherent in the politics of the day and latching on to the fanciful concept of an Olympic Truce.
The philanthropists that established the modern Olympics, whilst well meaning, created an institution that allowed and still allows the wealthy, predominantly white ruling elite to dominate and dictate the rules of engagement, inclusive of its value system which remains the same as obtained in antiquity.
We have witnessed sport’s pandering to the wealthy in every society, cozying up to the political elite as well while ostensibly committed to fair play, objectivity and good governance.
We have also, through history, experienced infective corruption at the highest level by those who have consistently established the rules and sanctions for their breaches. Just when one case makes case appears to have been addressed, we find another making global headlines.
There is little evidence of there being serious consequences for those who breach the rules. In this regard there is a very high level of inconsistency. Clearly, some international sporting organisations appear better at wiggling through their indiscretions than others.
Meanwhile, sport leaders seem to vie with politicians for the global spotlight, making little King Tots of themselves, in the process, wielding their own perceptions of ‘power’ over the organisations they lead. This may well explain why many international sport leaders often compromise themselves and their organisations on the altar of political expediency, for fear of being exposed in the global domain.
The one constant that remains in the face of all of the global reviews of sport in different societies and historical epochs is evidence of its power in and on societies. It seems to have the capacity to facilitate the coming together of peoples, the athletes, well above the sickening insularity and economic, social and cultural conflicts spawned by an annoying unwillingness to see and accept humanity in all its glory.
The athletes
In sport, the leaders are quick to highlight that it is all about the athletes. Without athletes, they claim, we have no sport.
It is quite true that the athletes are the central elements within any sport. But athletes operate within established structures which are themselves responsive to the changes of the environments within which they operate and the influencers that are constantly impactful.
Many may recall the old bogey of amateurism. Athletes were socialised into believing and accepting that success in sport allowed for enhanced national prestige and recognition.
The organisers of sport dictated that the athletes should accept the honour of being allowed to compete against each other and reap the benefit of the positive values attendant to sport – discipline, camaraderie, friendship, sharing, and fairness. The fact that the sporting organisations reaped the financial resources of organised sport, although in stark contrast to what was the plight of the athletes, did not matter. It was considered consistent with the historical realities of the particular historical period at the time.
Attempts at having athletes compete for financial gain met with mixed responses. Some flatly rejected the idea. Others lent verbal support. Others, not garnering the support of other international federations, went ahead and arranged for prize monies to be paid ‘under the table’ whilst continuing to openly deny any breaches of the official rules.
As expected, amateurism was officially laid to rest, more from breaches of the rules than an open admission that it was generally unfair for the international federations to benefit from the revenues generated by the athletes through their participation and performances while the athletes did not. Admission to this latter position was deemed a sort of condescension that was anathema to the lords of the sporting rings.
When then IOC President, Juan Antonio Samaranch first invited professional athletes to participate in the Olympics of Seoul, South Korea, 1988, he proclaimed that the Games were of such a world standard that they deserved to have the best athletes competing. He did however stop short of agreeing to prize money, once more lauding the importance of amateurism to the Olympic Movement and, rather embarrassingly, promoting the increasing revenues generated at the competition at the Games, especially since the introduction of the TOP programme introduced by Peter Ueberroth, Chair of LA1984, as a marketing strategy for the IOC.
FIFA, the international governing body for football, while agreeing to professionals in the Games, insisted that there will always be one world Cup, that which it alone would be entitled to officially organised. FIFA limited both the age group of the players and the number of professional athletes who could be officially engaged in its competition on the Olympic Games programme.
For the Olympic Games in Paris 2024, World Athletics paid the winner of each of its events and promised to extend the prize monies to the first three finishers at its competition in LA28.
Whilst several international Federations (IF) still vehemently reject the payment of prize monies at the Olympics, their stance may be, for the most part, their heavy reliance on the financials made available to them by the IOC for their engagement in the quadrennial sports gala; their share of the one-third of the television rights. For some, this amounts to their own biggest pay day.
In essence therefore, for several IFs, the matter of placing the athletes first is little more than popular rhetoric. In reality, the well-being of the athletes who generate the revenues of IFs falls relatively low down the totem pole of their respective priorities.
It should also be mentioned here that coaches and agents of athletes are also heavily reliant on the performances of their athletes. That is their livelihood and there is no shortage of examples of the extent to which athletes have been exploited by elements of both groupings, ending their careers only marginally better off than where they started while both their coaches and agents ‘live large’.
Inevitable changes
Athletes are also influencers. They impact the schools communities, clubs and countries that they have represented at one time or the other. They exert influence on their families and on their peers in the sport.
The giddy-headed world of celebrity status and lifestyles impact athletes as much as it does singers, actors and actresses, and the like. Unfortunately, too many athletes fail, like other celebrities, to understand their influence on others and so do not always emerge as positive role models for those whom they influence. The media are replete with such examples.
The desire to won at all costs is built upon that sordid part of the culture of sport that bodes no good but which, nonetheless, infects the global sporting environment.
Sport is, like life itself, everywhere, a struggle for one’s identity. The stakeholders of sport are aware of its extensive reach; its capacity to change lives, families, communities, nations and the world.
Today, we have the infectious attention economy in which the most challenging feature is finding truth. The pursuit of this truth in the wide and ever-expanding world of sport would continue, whatever some may do to deter its discovery and sustainability.
Mandela’s edict that sport can change the world resonates with many in that very world of which he spoke. Not everyone that turns to sport will adhere to the promise of Mandela’s call to arms to engender solidarity, unity and peace. Those who do hear and respond positively to his call, must understand that the road to the achievement of the objective is paved with good intentions but fraught with detractors and those committed to deception.
The struggle continues!
