Blackness less important to Harry than quality

Sports Minister Ncgonde Balfour was right when he said he has no need to apologise for voicing his dissatisfaction at the lack of black faces in the Springbok team.

It is now 17 years since Errol Tobias and Avril Williams took the field together for South Africa against England in Port Elizabeth. But we have not seen more than two black players take the field together for the Springboks in an important test match since that first occasion way back in 1984.

Pay attention to my wording there - important test match. That means a game that matters and one where the side selected is at full strength, as opposed to the meaningless farces against Spain and Uruguay in the last World Cup and the romp against Italy in Port Elizabeth.

Balfour was only highlighting a concern many critics mulled over when Springbok coach Harry Viljoen first named his training squad for Plettenberg Bay.

Much fuss was made then of the black representation, but it begged a question - how many of them would still be around when the big matches arrived?

The answer came in the form of Viljoen's most recent squad announcement, when he only found room for three black players. This is not a criticism, but an illustration that selecting black players does not automatically signify willingness to buy into the transformation ideal.

It was for this reason that I refused to follow some of my fellow scribes when last year Viljoen selected a record number of black players into the squad that toured Argentina and Britain when Viljoen first took over.

While Viljoen was lauded on many fronts for his "forward thinking" in choosing what was then a record number of black players, you had to look beyond the spin in your quest to find the truth.

The reality was that unlike his immediate predecessors, Viljoen had a 36-man squad at his disposal. It was easy for him then to find places for black players, particularly when you consider that it was not a tour where he placed a particularly strong emphasis on the performance of the midweek team. Indeed, there were times on that tour you got the impression senior management wanted to disassociate themselves from Alistair Coetzee's charges.

And though many of my fellow "white journalist" friends felt Viljoen showed guts in selecting Etienne Fynn to the front-row and Conrad Jantjes to the bench for the first test against France, I allowed myself to remain healthily cynical. My vindication came when Viljoen later admitted that he had underestimated the French and promptly dropped Fynn.

Here is where Balfour might be right about another thing, too. In accusing us whities of unwitting racism, he is presumably alluding to the mindset which prompted the haste with which so many highlighted and isolated Fynn as the reason the Boks failed at Ellis Park.

Everywhere you went after the Johannesburg test, including the chat room of this website, it appeared people were blaming Fynn's scrumming for the defeat. As it turned out, the Bok scrum battled as much in the following test in Durban and they weren't particularly impressive against Italy in Port Elizabeth either. But was there the same rush afterwards to isolate and blame Willie Meyer or Ollie le Roux?

It appears Fynn's status as a "quota selection" may have helped draw the spotlight in his direction when the Boks failed. Funny though that during the Super 12 his so-called deficiencies went so unremarked.

It is this perception that the selection of black players automatically implies a weakening of the team that is the real root of the problem being tackled in this instance by Balfour. The column has been written before - too many white coaches believe their commitment to transformation ends with the meeting of the quota set by SARFU. They often lack the necessary faith in the ability of the players under their command.

Ironically, considering that he appeared to show so little faith in Fynn, it is for this latter point that I will defend Viljoen against any criticism from Balfour, who may in any event have been attacking the feeder system rather than the Bok management itself.

Viljoen's initial selections may have shown me nothing about his commitment to transformation, but some of his subsequent actions have.

The most obvious example is the almost blind faith that Viljoen seems to have in the abilities of Conrad Jantjes. Even if it is true that Jantjes may not have made his test debut in Port Elizabeth had the Boks been up against stronger opposition, Viljoen's decision to go with him was an extension of the faith and excitement he has shown for the player when he talks about him.

Viljoen speaks about Jantjes with the same passion that he does Johann van Niekerk, the youngster who has come in for Rassie Erasmus and who will sit on the Springbok bench in the All Blacks test. He may well be wrong about both of them, and neither of them would have made the squad had Gavin Rich been the sole selector.

But Jantjes has impressed his Bok teammates and the point is that Viljoen has long since looked beyond the colour of Jantjes' skin and started judging him for his true potential as a possible future star.

Let it be said too that Viljoen showed me his faith in Jantjes and his real commitment to transformation by proving me wrong. When Deon Kayser was left out of the squad building up to the French tests, I argued that it was a retrogressive step in that Kayser would at least have been expected to play in the matches.

It was my view that Jantjes' selection was just an attempt by Viljoen to keep his "quota" numbers up while the absence of Kayser from the squad left him free to field a test team unfettered by transformation considerations. As it turned out, he chose Jantjes in his test 22.

In retrospect, Viljoen's willingness to leave out Kayser (even if I still believe he is wrong on the basis that Kayser was one of the best Super 12 players) actually said more positive things about his commitment to transformation than negative things.

It said that Viljoen is beyond the sort of thinking that once led a Western Province selection panel to think they could select an ageing Tinus Linee as their "development player".

Kayser is clearly good enough to be a squad member and thus keep Viljoen's unofficial "quota" steady for some time to come. But Viljoen, believing that at the age of 31 Kayser would not be around for the 2003 World Cup, saw beyond that. Coming to think of it, he did the same thing with Chester Williams after last year's overseas tour.

Williams was still good enough to be part of the extended squad, but as Viljoen saw no future for him as a test team player he opted instead to let the player know that he was looking for younger players who could offer him "that something special".

It is this willingness to treat old black players the same way that he would treat old white players that makes Viljoen's approach so different from his predecessors, some of whom were misled into believing that the transformation drive meant that a player's blackness should be seen as being as important as playing ability.