How Sporting Links Bolster Racist State

Scan page 11

MEGABUDGET EPICS RACISM runs through world sport like a poisoned stream. 'There's no way I'm going to lose my title to a black man" , snarled Alan Minter just before meeting Marvellous Marvin Hagler and winding up ex-World Middleweight Champion.

"What is worse than losing is the idea of this strange black man coming at us from the mountains" moaned Brendan Foster after the pride of Geordie land had lost yet again to the great African runner, Miruts Yifter.

At times, racism _becomes orchestrated. Larry Holmes, the world's best heavyweight, recently condemned the growing publicity round White Hope Mike Cooney. 'It's bad because what they are really saying is beat that nigger boy. Show them white is best."

The growing protests against the South African Rugby tour of New Zealand have, however, placed in the limelight once more the one country where sport is formally and legally organised on the apartheid lines that govern the soceview IF YOU are bored to tears with the Royal beanfeast, there is currently a rash of megabudget epics available for your entertainment.

First and foremost in the New Wave of these are 'Excalibur' (King Arthur and a host of heaving flesh) and 'Clash of the Titans' (Perseus meets assorted growling puppets).

After the unromanticised blood and thunder films of the earlier 'seventies, and as capitalism starts to rot itself to death, the film industry is beginning. to churn out undisguised escapism. At the same time the media serves up endless rhapsodies to the Fairytale Princess and her husband with the large ears.

The message is simple:

keep your eyes fixed firmly on the firmament and think as little as possible about trivia like the hunger strikers, unemployment and state repression. If iety as a whole.

In South Africa, sport is big business, heavily subsidised by private enterprise, often US and UK owned. Last year, South African Breweries spent a million dollars on sponsorship, General Motors $500,000, and Datsun $200,000.

White virility

Sport in South Africa has something of the importance it had in Nazi Germany. It plays a central role in justifying theories of racial supremacy and celebrating white virility. Former Sports Minister, P.J. Koornhof, felt that it was so central to the white psyche that he went so far as to argue that "play and sport are strong enough to cause political and economic relations to flourish or collapse"

Because of these attitudes, South Africa • has spent the last decade and millions in a co-ordinated offensive, aimed at convincing the world that its sport is increasingly integrated and luring prominent the rate of profit is dropping over the precipice, the ruling class can still make a packet on celluloid kitsch.

These two films reach new depths. Here we have the two sides of this escapism.

In 'Excalibur' we have the king who is the personification of the land he rules - this right to rule is cemented by the possession of the all-powerful sword, Excalibur. The king without a sword is the land without & king; as Arthur prospers so does the land, as he declines into illness, starvation and pestilence plague the good folk of Ancient Britain.

What we need is a strong king with a faithful Queen - preferably one who doesn't burst into tears at jousts (or polo matches).

In the month of the Royal Wedding this feudal drivel may not seem so very archaic.

Was such a high budget The whites laze in the shade, sportspeople to South Africa • to legitimise and publicise sport in the apartheid state.

The aim is to get back into international competition. The so-called Committee for Fairness in Sport received over £5 million in government money. The advantages for visitors are recalled by Rugby international Gareth Edwards, "We stayed in the best hotel in Pretoria, all expenses put down to our room numbers. No one was to be out of pocket...... You name it, we had the very best."

Uncle Tom Showpiece multi-racial events such as the recent Mathebula-Laciar and Coetze-Weaver World Boxing Championships are set up to provide evidence really necessary just to tell us that the solution to starvation and all our other ills depends on fighting a gold cup (made out of plastic) with a loud voice that acts in the service of the Realm? Maybe not.

But if you find the curious mixture of Catholicism and Celtic lunar symbolism a bit heavy, you can always sit back and enjoy the sporadic battle scenes with liberal doses of dry ice and red lighting.

And if that doesn't satisfy you, there's always the gorgeous Sir Lancelot...

'Clash of the Titans' is a different, bastardised myth-cycle altogether. Instead of dingy castles and dungeons, •and sordid decay, we have the glittering Olympians meddling in human affairs as is their wont.

Take & large number of celebrated actors, some dated Ray Harryhausen special effects, and add an irritating metal owl (R2D2 the blacks toil in the sun of integration. Selected Uncle Tom blacks are sponsored to compete against whites in official events. In reality integrated competition makes up less than one per cent of all sporting fixtures in the Republic.

Ghettoes

As Sam Ramsamy, Chairperson of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee points out, the blacks are "elevated to equality for the duration of a sports fixture and then sent back to the ghettoes."

The photographs of black and white together used by the South African government in a UK national paper campaign last year look very convincing. But about the same time Abe Louw, President of the Transvaal Rugby Union, punctured the showpiece with wings) called Bubo, and you've got it: a celebration of individual heroism and womanly faithfulness much more in keeping with the real needs of our society than all the Arthurian nonsense about kings and swords and stuff. No degenerate mortals in this While in 'Excalibur' they screw in suits of armour, in 'Clash of the Titans' they keep their hands properly to themselves (except of course for the lustful Olympians - but that's all offstage anyway).

Perseus meets Godzilla is all good clean fun. And in these days of rioting youth and underage passion, a bit of solid, moral gallantry is just what this country needs - with a bit of backup from CS gas and plastic bullets.

But I can't help feeling it won't ever quite catch on like Star Wars.