Leadership is a privilege that affords one the opportunity to take steps, even extraordinary ones, to create, encourage and role model a world that is more palatable and desirable to all. Unfortunately, nearly 25 years after our democratic transition, this is still not something that is seen in the world of rugby.

SA Rugby has missed its transformation goals by a long distance. One can count the number of head coaches of colour on one hand in our Super Rugby/Franchise structures. In a country in which 91% of the population are people of colour how can this be? Similarly, research conducted by the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) shows that people of colour are often not considered for key/executive positions in business and are rarely invited into networking circles of real power.

Part of the problem is that many SA businesses view transformation and diversity exclusively from an organisational perspective (as it relates to organisational policy, procedures and HR plans) and overlook the personal or stakeholder element (encompassing the common good and organisational purpose). Our BBBEE legislation tries to intervene in the latter by encouraging companies to source and more broadly bring about meaningful change in our economic landscape, but this is clearly not having the desired effect.

Instead, those who hold economic power, currently mainly white leaders and executives, continually find ways to continue in their selfish and privileged ways. This is the opposite of what is needed and does not represent the intent of transformation. The maintenance of the status quo, masked by niceness and cordial behaviour, appears to be the main goal. I am reminded of Khalil Gibran’s quote from his book The Prophet:

“Verily the lust for comfort kills the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.” And it is our very souls that are being questioned here — the souls of our leadership.

The (big) business of sport in South Africa is no different but rarely comes under scrutiny from business quarters or business/management scholars. When looking at sports businesses, the Bowmans Report showed that, unbelievably, WP Rugby leadership did not even have a proper Employment Equity plan drawn up in 2018. What does this say about their intent and commitment to change in the country?

The case of Paul Treu and the WP Rugby Union, recently published in the Rapport (January 2019), and the ongoing shortfall against transformation plans or even equity requirements for coaches, as reported in the Sunday Times (January 2019), also show us that executives and leaders in the business of sport continue to reproduce unequal and apartheid-aligned outcomes. An adapted question, which Robin diAngelo in The Guardian asks and we all should ponder is: “How have your opportunities and privileges been shaped by your race and access, or lack thereof?” It is an important question which we all should engage with through dialogue.

It is concerning those local and international business sponsors that hold positions on Rugby Union boards, do not appear to have raised these questions nor challenged the status quo or, at the very least, the slow pace of change. In fact, they continue to fund this archaic system of inequality.

What is even more perplexing is their belief that their continued sponsoring of non-change in structures at the highest levels, like coaching and performance management, will not have consequences for their businesses from current and future customers and negatively affect their potential future deals/relationships with other, more enlightened and transformationally-proactive businesses and people.

Are they aware of how acutely it pains the majority of South Africans when we witness, year after year, the continued protection of white privilege and access in our sports businesses/unions, and the perceived perpetuation of apartheid-styled practices?

Most citizens are fed up and have begun, and will continue, to withhold their custom from our aligned sporting events. Some are even calling for bans on companies and sponsors, as was the case during the 1980s when overseas private companies sought to continue doing business in SA under apartheid, perpetuating the unequal treatment of the majority people of South Africa.

When coaches of colour are not put forward for TV interviews during half-time or at the end of games, we are prevented from being exposed to their level of intelligence, sophisticated analysis and understanding of the game, with the result that we unconsciously remain convinced that only white coaches are therefore capable of leading teams.

The Treu and Ashwin Willemse incidents are not isolated cases — they highlight the thin veneer of transformation in our society and workplaces, which is experienced daily by the majority of South Africans.

As in sport, when a minority of system-colluding people of colour are kept in the executive halls of power to demonstrate “proximity with difference” and dispel the view that it is still all-white leadership, so too in business a few people of colour are co-opted in positions of power without having full power, or are engaged in ratifying decisions made elsewhere without their real consideration when it matters.

As in sport, when executives and leaders do not consider putting themselves through proper diversity training and skills-development (thereby signalling their views on the importance and necessity of such training and development to their colleagues and staff), so too in business, executives rarely find it necessary in South Africa to upskill themselves in diversity and inclusion, engage in healing and reconciliation workshops, seek forgiveness and actively engage in reparative actions, even though we come from a dysfunctional past as a nation.

As in sport, where people of colour have not been given the appropriate skills and education to overcome their apartheid-induced lack, so too in business, access to education and the appropriate skills and networks are withheld from people of colour, so that they are unable to compete on an equal basis or, when they are given the opportunity, are left floundering as lone individuals who, over time, begin to question their own confidence and abilities. 

History has shown us that false affinity and empowered powerlessness have been the underhanded tools of the, often anxious, privileged over millennia when faced with a (forced) change in their environments. This is proving true for many SA businesses enacting disingenuous liberalism and, in particular, in our sports unions/businesses in South Africa.

The veils and silence need to be lifted and pressure exerted so that visible corrective action and change ensues in the very short-term, beyond just talk and paper-based organisational plans. DM