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CAPE TOWN - South Africa's government will continue to pressure teams to meet racial quotas when choosing players, the country's sports minister said on Tuesday (local time) amid a controversy over the makeup of its Springboks rugby side.
In a speech to parliament in Cape Town, Sports Minister Makhenkesi Stofile said the nation's majority black government was carrying on with the policy to make the national sports teams more diverse.
"Merit selection cannot be achieved if the playing field of the participants is not level. To pretend otherwise is only to be over-hopeful or to be simply mischievous," Stofile said in his budget speech.
The ruling African National Congress wants to make rugby, cricket and other predominantly white sports more reflective of the nation's racial composition in keeping with a drive to empower blacks 13 years after the end of white minority rule.
Sport was a key battleground during South Africa's apartheid era, when its teams were ostracised by international sporting federations and banned from touring throughout much of the world.
Critics of the current government, however, say it is charting a course that once again makes race rather than ability the principal touchstone of the country's sporting life, leading to the selection of below-par teams.
The debate has intensified in recent weeks since a well-regarded white rugby forward with ties to the anti-apartheid movement was left off the national squad to face England in a two-test series starting on Saturday.
Luke Watson, whose father campaigned for a non-racial rugby league during the apartheid era, was eventually included in the side after the intervention of senior sports officials, including Stofile's brother.
The move prompted cries of government favouritism and meddling as well as fears that a new law could give the government even more powers to intervene in such matters in the future.
But Stofile on Tuesday pledged that authorities would not run roughshod over society in their effort to transform sports.
"Affirmative action need not be hostile to some groups while it is assisting others to catch up. We want all our children to start from the same line," Stofile said.
- REUTERS
