If you want to piss off a bunch of sports-loving South Africans take away their hosting rights, something we saw in action when Fikile Mbalula suspended four major federations from bidding on international events.

Those included the South African Rugby Union (Saru) and Cricket South Africa (CSA), both of whom were deemed to have fallen short of the transformation targets laid out for them.

But what, in practical terms, are these transformation targets? We all hear figures bandied around, but it wouldn’t hurt to see some actual, concrete figures against which the unions can then be held responsible.

The Daily Vox have done some digging into the two aforementioned sporting codes, and here’s what they have come up with:

The transformation objective for the federations set by the government is the 60% generic black African target. That means that 60% of the makeup of any team needs to be non-white. The federations all signed a memorandum last year stating they would adhere to the above transformation requirements.

That’s just a general ‘across the board’ policy for a number of federations, so let’s look at cricket and rugby in particular.

1. Cricket

CSA have always prided themselves on being one of the most transformed unions. In order to ensure that players of colour make it to the international ranks, they partnered with the Basic Education Department, Sport and Recreation and the Gauteng Cricket Board.

The cricket body is looking particularly at school sport in a bid to make sure that black players make it into the national teams.

CSA implemented another quota at the start of the 2015/2016 domestic cricket season where all teams had to field 6 players of colour in their starting XI. Three of those players had to be African black players. This rule was adhered to in domestic matches, but is not transferring over the national side quickly enough for Mbalula, who wants at least 6 players of colour in the Proteas starting line-up.

2. Rugby

Saru set themselves a target where they would increase black participation to 50% by 2019. It’s not hard to see that they have fallen well short of this, which is why the issue rages on in the sport…

The 50% target means that by the time [coach Allister] Coetzee takes the team to the Rugby World Cup in Japan [in 2019], half the team must be black.

In last year’s World Cup semi-final against New Zealand, the Boks only fielded three players of colour in the starting line-up. Only one of them, Tendai “Beast” Mtawarira, was African black. The other two players who are considered to be black were JP Pietersen and Bryan Habana.

On 28 May, Coetzee named his first Bok squad, which seems to be meeting transformation targets so far. Twelve out of 31 players are categorised as black, with eight being African black players.

There’s no pleasing everybody when it comes to transformation targets, and when things don’t go according to plan it’s easy to hear the word ‘quota’ tossed around with vitriol.

It seems unavoidable that enforcing set targets has the potential to diminish our chances of international sporting success, and we are seeing many talented sportsmen and women heading overseas earlier in their careers than in years gone by, but I guess your standpoint depends on how strongly you believe our national teams should accurately reflect the country they represent.

Just one side note to anyone who has ever used the ‘what about Bafana Bafana having no white players’ argument, because this is a favourite retort and I’m frankly tired of hearing it.

White South Africans were never denied the chance to compete for the national team based on their ethnicity, nor were they denied access to facilities and other opportunities that prevented them from achieving national recognition.

The argument doesn’t hold water so please stop using it, you’re making the rest of us look bad.

[source:dailyvox]