Quotas out - transformation is in!

Xola Magwaza at the 2009 IeSF Challenge

It was pleasing to see that the Sports Minister, the Hon. Fikile Mbabula backed down on the issue of quotas.

Quotas are a very dirty word for many people in South Africa.

Even a recent South African court case declared quotas to be illegal in business,

However, even with the Minister back-tracking on the issues of quotas, the Minister, and SASCOC, are dedicated to the issue of transformation.

Of course, transformation does not just apply to the sporting teams, but to the entire structure of the sports code from the athletes, coaches, technical officials, and administrators.

This of course, poses various problems for the sporting codes as most coaches, technical officials, and administrators are in fact volunteers.

Volunteers are, as we all know, people who do something for free out of the love and passion that they have for the game. Without the volunteers in any sports structure, the federations themselves will surely buckle under the weight of having to find additional resources to pay those who demand to be paid for the jobs that volunteers are doing for free.

Thus in a volunteer organisation, it seems as though transformation will be a slower process as it will take time to develop the ethos of volunteerism?

I do not believe so!

Sporting bodies are no different to churches. Churches often survive in the most adverse of conditions. Churches survive without government aid and purely upon the contributions of the membership. The contributions consist of financial, time, effort and skills.

It all depends in what you really believe, and what you

want to see happen.

For the members of a church group, of any religion, it is the promotion of their beliefs.

Why then do gamers shy away from the same level commitment in promoting eSports? After all more gamers put more time into gaming than into any other activity that they do. Gamers get far more pleasure out of eSports than from any other activity. Gamers should then treat gaming as if it were there religion and put more back.

With more volunteers from across the board, total transformation will be achieved very quickly indeed, and we can then all move on from worrying about politics and getting down to the business at hand, and that is, playing the game!