Olympic Games underline that politics is sport and sport is politics

First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.

In an age of so­cial me­dia and easy dis­sem­i­na­tion of in­for­ma­tion and mes­sages, both real and fake, the In­ter­na­tional Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) re­mains mired in the past.

Ear­lier this month the breath­tak­ingly ar­ro­gant or­gan­i­sa­tion that “owns” the Olympics amended Clause 50 of its char­ter to al­low ath­letes more free­dom to ex­press their po­lit­i­cal and other views. As if they didn’t have the right to do that any­way.

Pre­vi­ously the clause stated: “No kind of demon­stra­tion or po­lit­i­cal, re­li­gious or racial pro­pa­ganda is per­mit­ted in any Olympic sites, venues or other ar­eas.”

The new guide­lines al­low ath­letes to ex­press their views but only on cer­tain plat­forms at cer­tain times. One of the times that is def­i­nitely off lim­its is on the podium, dur­ing a medal cer­e­mony. An­other is dur­ing the open­ing and clos­ing cer­e­monies. If those rules are breached the IOC has a lengthy list of sanc­tions it can im­pose on ath­letes, which in­cludes ejec­tion from the Olympic Games.

Un­der the new “re­laxed” reg­u­la­tions, ath­letes are “al­lowed” to ex­press an opin­ion on their own so­cial me­dia, in the mixed zone talk­ing to me­dia, at press con­fer­ences and in other in­ter­views. Ba­si­cally, in ar­eas with less eyes on them and in places that don’t pub­licly em­bar­rass the IOC.

But let’s not start ap­plaud­ing the IOC for their pro­gres­sive new stance on free­dom of ex­pres­sion, be­cause the amend­ments to the char­ter only came about un­der duress. For years ath­letes lob­bied against the IOC’s restrictions be­fore the suits at the plush Lau­sanne head­quar­ters threw out a bone, mainly for com­mer­cial and im­age rea­sons.

The IOC spent lots of time and money pay­ing consultants and con­duct­ing sur­veys over an is­sue that is re­ally very ba­sic – al­low­ing peo­ple free­dom of ex­pres­sion. They made great fan­fare over the amend­ments and there were many caveats in the fine print.

Thank­fully, ath­letes are not so quick to roll over and be happy with the grubby morsel. They want all restrictions on free­dom of ex­pres­sion elim­i­nated from the char­ter.

There are some vig­i­lant groups con­stantly nip­ping at the IOC’s heels over this is­sue. One of them is the Euro­pean Elite Ath­letes’ As­so­ci­a­tion, which re­leased a strong state­ment shortly af­ter the orig­i­nal amend­ments were pub­lished on 2 July.

“The IOC’s ap­proach to free­dom of speech and ex­pres­sion con­sists of an at­tempt to re­strict, re­de­fine and con­trol the way that the ath­letes ex­er­cise their fun­da­men­tal hu­man right,” the state­ment read.

“Threat­en­ing to sanc­tion ath­letes who peacefully protest on is­sues such as racism is not only in­con­sis­tent with hu­man rights but also goes against the val­ues that the IOC claims to sup­port.”

Of course, free­dom of ex­pres­sion is a two-way street and if ath­letes want all restrictions elim­i­nated then they face the prospect of be­ing up­set by ges­tures and mes­sages friends and com­peti­tors might send out.

If full free­dom of ex­pres­sion is al­lowed (and it should be) then it stands to rea­son that the mes­sages ath­letes is­sue will not be con­sis­tent. And they might be un­com­fort­able.

But isn’t that the point of po­lit­i­cal and so­cial protest – to chal­lenge a sys­tem and ques­tion author­ity and ide­ol­ogy? It is of­ten un­com­fort­able be­cause it holds up a mir­ror to in­jus­tice and the sta­tus quo. Po­lit­i­cal state­ments and ges­tures in sports are­nas have al­ways di­vided opin­ion – you only have to look at the Black Lives Mat­ter (BLM) move­ment as an ex­am­ple.

Noth­ing I can think of in a sport­ing con­text has di­vided opin­ion as much as the sim­ple ges­ture of ath­letes tak­ing a knee to call for an end to all forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion, po­lice bru­tal­ity and racially mo­ti­vated vi­o­lence against black peo­ple.

Yet BLM is such a hot potato that many sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions want noth­ing to do with it, in­clud­ing the IOC. Dur­ing the week, none of the of­fi­cial IOC me­dia chan­nels showed the Great Bri­tain foot­ball women’s team tak­ing the knee be­fore their game against Chile.

The Guardian re­ported that the IOC is­sued an of­fi­cial de­cree to its em­ploy­ees, in­struct­ing that no BLM ges­tures could be shown. In the wake of The Guardian’s story, the IOC and Tokyo Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee did an about-turn.

Many be­lieve that sport and pol­i­tics should not mix, but when have they not? Sport, par­tic­u­larly at in­ter­na­tional level, is an ex­ten­sion of ide­ol­ogy (think of apartheid South Africa or Nazi Ger­many) or mil­i­tary power (the Soviet Union and the US dur­ing the Cold War).

The re­al­ity is that sport, pol­i­tics, hu­man rights and so­cial jus­tice have al­ways been en­twined, from an­cient Greece through to mod­ern Ja­pan.

Tom­mie Smith is hardly re­mem­bered as a man who ran the 200m in a blis­ter­ing 19.83 sec­onds 53 years ago, but he is re­mem­bered for rais­ing a gloved fist on the Mex­ico City podium to draw at­ten­tion to the black con­scious­ness move­ment.

Pol­i­tics and sport are cu­ri­ous bed­fel­lows but there is no es­cap­ing the fact that they are in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked. Yet the IOC, which is iron­i­cally a hugely po­lit­i­cal en­tity mas­querad­ing as a sports or­gan­i­sa­tion, does its best to sep­a­rate pol­i­tics and sport.

It is fail­ing, and will con­tinue to fail, de­spite dik­tats is­sued from on high, be­cause sport is pol­i­tics. And pol­i­tics is sport. DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for free to Pick n Pay Smart Shoppers at these Pick n Pay stores until 24 July 2021. From 31 July 2021, DM168 will be available for R25 at Pick n Pay, Exclusive Books and airport bookstores.