DEC 14 — As you would expect, and rightly so, Nelson Mandela’s death has prompted an outpouring of respect and admiration from the sporting fraternity, with a host of stars expressing messages of sympathy and pre-game moments of silence being held at sporting venue all over the world.
Mandela was always heavily linked with sport following his release from jail and rise to power in the early 1990s, embodied most vividly in South Africa’s hosting of the 1995 Rugby Union World Cup, the first major global event to take place in the country since the end of apartheid and an opportunity for Mandela to demonstrate the new unity of his nation by serving as the public face for the tournament, something he carried out with great dignity and enthusiasm.
The same process was repeated more recently, of course, with Mandela again playing a prominent public role during the 2010 football World Cup in his country.
Mandela was one of many political figures to embrace sport as an essential and potentially life-changing part of cultural life, famously commenting: “Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire and to break down barriers, and to unite people around the world in a way that little else does. It talks to the youth of the world in a language that they understand. Therefore, it is important that we use this powerful vehicle for unity.”
It’s a sentiment we have heard many times, with all manner of governments, commercial organisations, sporting bodies and other interested parties regularly proclaiming the “power of sport” to change the world for the better.
Essentially, it is true: sport can indeed foster demonstrations of tolerance and acceptance that would otherwise be unthinkable — such as the current sight of black American basketball player Sonny Weems being lauded as a hero by fans of CSKA Moscow in a Russian society that remains extremely prone to casual racism. Weems’ presence on the CSKA team can only make a positive difference, however small it may be.
In the 1980s, British society was afflicted by similar prejudices; although the battle is by no means completely won, those attitudes are now increasingly finding themselves marginalised by an atmosphere of racial integration, and the role of black British footballers such as John Barnes undeniably played a significant part in defeating bigotry.
Sport’s positive potential is not only found in matters of race, of course. The English Premier League has been particularly keen to develop its ‘community’ activities in recent years, using the power of its clubs and players to deliver a series of initiatives in areas of health, education, fitness, self-esteem and so on — the idea being that impressionable young men (in particular) are more likely to listen to their favourite Manchester United player telling them it’s important to read than they are to absorb the same message from teachers, parents or politicians.
Ultimately, of course, the Premier League is really only making the effort to implement these campaigns for marketing purposes, encouraging the ‘brand’ of the league to become ever more deeply entrenched into the daily lives of more and more people. But they do also indisputably do a great deal of good.
However, the question of how the ‘power of sport’ can and should be utilised is not always straightforward.
For example, Spain recently played a football friendly international against Equatorial Guinea, a country whose political regime has been regularly criticised by the United Nations for alleged human right abuses.
The reason for Spain’s visit was never fully explained by the spineless Spanish Football Federation — it may have been purely financial, or even a simple case that Equatorial Guinea’s coach, Andoni Goikoetxea, is an old friend of Spain’s boss Vicente Del Bosque.
Spain found moral justification for the game by arguing that their visit — including an open training session — provided a rare opportunity for young people in a poor country to savour the excitement of seeing some of sport’s biggest stars on their own doorstep.
The other side of the argument, however, is that Spain’s footballers — the reigning world and European champions — have done little more than give some kind of legitimacy to a corrupt political regime by agreeing to play there.
It’s certainly the case that the positive power of sport can be usurped by wicked intentions — most famously, perhaps, with Germany’s staging of the 1936 Olympic Games, which Adolf Hitler used as a flag-waving exercise for the German Reich and the supposed superiority of his mythical Aryan race — a theory that was somewhat mocked when Jesse Owens, the black American athlete, won four gold medals.
Sport can work both ways — good and evil. How it is used depends upon context and the instruments of power: who actually has the capability to decide which sporting events should take place where and when.
Too often, these delicate matters are wrongly left in the hands of individual sportsmen, as though their exceptional ability in athletic endeavours also gives them a unique insight into politics and morality.
For example, when Spain travelled for that game in Equatorial Guinea, Chelsea midfielder Juan Mata was called upon to attend a press conference and explain why his team’s participation in the game was a good thing. Mata appears to be a thoughtful and intelligent individual, but how can we expect any professional sportsman to offer a meaningful insight into the political complexities of life in a faraway African nation?
Rather than asking individual sportsmen like Mata to justify and explain the politics of sport, these decisions can only be properly taken by the international community.
It is not always easy and there is not always one simple answer. But sport’s immense ability to influence and change attitudes — both for good and bad — renders the oft-stated viewpoint that “sport and politics don’t mix” irrelevant.
If there is anything that sport should learn from the life of Nelson Mandela, it’s that whether we like it or not, sport IS politics, and its power should be handled with care.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
