Questions of Mike Stofile

Paul Dobson takes a look at the hornets’s nest stirred up by discarded rugby boss Mike Stofile, who uttered all sorts of racial accusations after he was beaten in a South African Rugby Union (SARU) presidential vote by Oregan Hoskins. There’s a few questions rugby365‘s respected writer would like answered!

This last series of outbursts by Mike Stofile in his anger at not being elected president of SARU are worrying and suggest that there should be questions asked – lots of questions.

Stofile in one outburst said that his non-election was proof that there was no place for blacks in South African rugby and he invited the government to intervene in South African rugby because “I don’t believe rugby should sort out their own problems”. He even suggested that there was “a third force” that worked against him.

This is sad enough to be depressing.

Let’s ask some questions:
1. Is being black a sufficient criterion for election?
2. What are Stofile’s credentials as a rugby administrator that warrant his election?
3. Are we going back to job reservation?
4. Is it possible for a white man to be elected president of SARU?
5. Where does transformation end and racial discrimination start?

There are people who rejoiced at the birth of South Africa as a nation when we believed that race classification was gone. That rejoicing seems to have been premature. It seems that race classification is coming back. Even not being black enough is not good enough.

It seems that all that has happened is that apartheid era classification has been stood on its head. Then the descending pecking order was white – coloured – black. Now it’s black – coloured – white. If it was wrong then, what makes it right now?

If Oregan Hoskins is not black enough, is that enough to exclude him from the presidency? Is being white a disqualification?

That prompts another question: Are there quotas for those serving on sporting bodies at national and provincial level?

Does that not mean that merit is out the window and whoever is elected is there just because he is black? Would that not produce shame or at least uncertainty – or is the money enough compensation for any feeling of shame or inadequacy?

That prompts another question: Would it not be better if the only rugby administrators to be paid should be full-time employees of a rugby union? People who have other jobs would then not be paid huge sums of money? Or is that too much to ask in this Age of Greed, too idealistic, a hopeless cause?

Then our last question: Who is this third force?

Tell us the names.

Or is it an anonymous thing – something concocted as an excuse when democracy is not good enough?

Is it the same anonymous group that apparently referred to Peter de Villiers as a “kaffir coach”? Those were words used by Butana Khompela. He, too, has not been able to name names. Will he (Khompela) be the man to be solving rugby’s problems?

Perhaps bullying is better than democracy after all.

But in the meantime some answers may well alleviate the pall of gloom that so quickly replaced the euphoria of winning the World Cup.

When the man with the mike was going round in that crowd to welcome the Conquering Heroes home, he asked a blonde girl with an Afrikaans accent who her favourite player was, and she said: “Bryan Habana.” And he asked a black man who his hero was and he said: “John Smit.”

That’s the South Africa we want. It’s not the South Africa Stofile is promoting.

He proved that it was right to vote him out.

Do you agree with Paul? Email us your views!