Mark Fredericks

Mark Fredericks is a Senior Technician at Walter Sisulu University in East London, fulfilling the role of technical assistant to the broadcast lecturer in the Journalism Department, and assisting 3rd-year journalism students with their final-year video documentary productions. He also teaches photojournalism as part of the Broadcast course at 1st- year level. His research interests are broadly concentrated around the omission of social narratives in post-apartheid sporting discourses, media/press and politics. Mark has presented on the relationship between sport, society and politics locally and abroad, using mainly audio-visual presentation methods. Mark completed his Masters Degree at the University of the Free State in 2017. Mark also has a chapter published in the Ohio University Press book on Sports in Africa (2020), along with several other newspaper op-eds published locally and abroad.

ABSTRACT:

“TO FORGET OR REMEMBER: Making a case for a truth conference on South African sport”

Mark Fredericks, Walter Sisulu University

2021 Marked the 30th anniversary of the lifting of the decade’s long sports moratorium, as behind the scenes deals and negotiations between the ANC and apartheid sport realized significant dividends for the isolated sports federations of the apartheid elite. The 1991 Friendship cricket tour, led by Clive Rice, opened the floodgates for the apartheid sports federations to walk back into the international arena with minimal disruption to their modus operandi. South Africa’s return to international competition was project-managed by the ANC and micro-managed by the apartheid sporting elite. By the time sports unity amongst South Africa’s racially segregated bodies came into effect, the broad antiapartheid sports movement had been completely subverted and crippled. The anti-apartheid sports movement that had occupied the playing space under the banner of SACOS was no more. South Africa’s sporting successes post-1992 have significantly downplayed the role of SACOS, and most certainly the role of sport within marginalized communities in the building of cohesion and social consciousness. In post-apartheid South Africa, national sports such as Springbok rugby and Protea cricket, serves both as distraction and socio-political comfort food in the absence of meaningful social cohesion programmes. As the country reels under rampant crime, chronic corruption and endless racial tensions, this essay revisits the idealism of the SACOS sports movement in the 50th year of its establishment, and presents an argument for a moment of deep reflection on the state of normalized sport in an abnormal society, through a formal truth and reconciliation conference.