The life and times of the South African Council on Sport (Sacos), the only explicitly non-racial sports body in the world, a history of the sport struggle will become one of the most controversial sport books in South Africa and overboard. The Lies, The Sell Outs, The Betrayal and The Truth will be launched on Thursday 27 April in Paarl at Radio KC .107 Radio station during a live broadcast.
The author, Jerry Seale from Wellington and doyen of community-based sport, calls a spade a spade in a book set to shock South African and world sports bodies on the truth of why Sacos was crucified for political gain and why establishment sports paid millions of rands to get into international sport.
The secret midnight meetings while late former President Nelson Mandela was still in prison are expected to create shock waves. Overseas meetings were manoeuvred to keep Sacos out of hardline policies and principles.
Seale said that the need to write this book was painful because Sacos’ own officials and presidents of different sport codes sold their once-beloved organisation for position and money.
“The truth was never told to the masses why top officials established ghost sport codes without any structures and mandate from their members to form the disgraced National Sports Council (NSC), which became the sports wing of the ANC, one that spread lies about Sacos. The latter’s die-hard stalwarts dubbed its “sell-outs” traitors who betrayed non-racial sport.
“Sacos was a threat to apartheid and a target [for vilification by] the ANC at that time with their lies to world sports organisations,” Seale said.
In his book he openly states Mandela was one of the forerunners in helping “white” sport onto the international stage, and the ANC didn’t care about the manner in which sports codes were kept alive and integral to life under apartheid.
The once-only explicitly non-racial sports body in the world was demolished by the NSC, allowing an athletics team to go to Barcelona in 1992 without a flag, emblem or anthem of their country.
The book, more than 310 pages long, starts with the birth of Sacos in 1973, Sanroc, its six presidents and five secretaries, Sacos sports structures, the colour bar on David Samaai from Paarl and others, policies and resolutions on sport, such as the famous oxymoron (use of contradictory words) “No Normal Sport in an Abnormal Society”. Then there were the challenges, such as no media coverage, lack of sponsors, inadequate facilities, state-violence involvement. Sam Ramsamy was called the “Judas of the sport struggle”. Despite being a member of Sanroc, the sports body advocating excluding South African sport from the Olympics, he helped the NSC and ANC to to secure Barcelona.
“This book is about the truth and to draw attention to the ‘sell-outs’ mentioned at Sacos meetings, in minutes, reports and community references, singling those out who left the sports body for personal enrichment or sold the sports struggle out for political gain.”
