Lots of things

I arrived a little early yesterday for my meeting with the director of a sports programme in Mitchell's Plain, so I sat and waited on the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the foyer of the primary school at which he's based for the next couple of weeks. The mustached school principal kept coming to offer me tea, a better chair, just checking to see that I'm ok. The two black mothers sitting next to me got no such attention. In fact they got no attention period. I have my own prejudices and privileges to worry about, so when an older coloured man treats a white woman like the madam, and the black woman sitting next to her like the madam's invisible maid, I know I should do more than give a stink-eye to him and an incredulous 'can you believe this character?' head-shake to her but honestly, I just can't fight every battle. And I'm not even sure that it's my battle to fight: yesterday marked the 35 year anniversary of Biko's death, he was killed in the police station of the suburb where I grew-up.

Anyway, lost in thoughts of black consciousness, I get a big bear hug from one of my favourite community partners and he walks me outside to watch a frenetic break-time soccer match played on the concrete quad of the school. Each team has three girls and three boys to the side, and in an interesting twist, if a girl scores a goal, she gets awarded 2 points, instead of 1. "It's to encourage girls to play", my partner explains to me, "to get them off the sidelines and into the game". At first I'm uncomfortable with the unequal scoring, because it's premised on the idea that the girls aren't as skilled as the boys, that they've really triumphed when they score a goal. Before I get too riled up, I realize that the boys are better than the girls, not because of some God-given ability, but because they play every break time, and everyday after-school. The boys practice constantly. It's only in the last few years that the girls' league was set up, and only this year that it's really gaining momentum. The programme director tells me about the local girl going to Norway to compete in a karate competition, that, "if you just give them the chance, the girls really excel."

To give the girls a chance, you need to motivate them to participate, and you need to incentivize the boys to include them. You need to encourage the boys not to kick at goal themselves but to pass to their female team-mates and allow them the opportunity to score, and when they score, the two points reward both the scorer, and the boy who recognized she could score. Conditioning and socializing children it seems, is a lot like training a puppy: treats when they do something good. In their insistent quest to be the top team, I don't think the boys will tolerate the skewed scoring when the girls have perfected their soccer skills, when it becomes clear that boys and girls are equally able to outmaneuver their opponents. Time will tell on that one...

However, the purpose of my visit was not to stand in the sun and watch soccer, it was to chat about the sports programme, the school, the director, his family, my work, the weather and the coaching qualification he's offering to unemployed matriculants in Qwa-Qwa and Limpopo. Fabulous man, I really do admire the fruit off the tree with him. We chat for a while, and he repeats something he's told me before: "My vision for the organization is that over time it becomes unnecessary."
Unnecessary because things have changed, the world has changed, the schools have changed and kids get to, you know, be kids, and have games and sports programmes worked into their everyday.

I daydream for a moment, thinking of a redundant NGO sector. And then I think of Marikana. 35 years later, black men are still being killed by the police.

"Ya," I answer him with a little smile, "maybe one day we'll all be out of a job."

We look over the sandy patches that constitute the school's garden. After a few days of sunshine, clouds are starting to gather. It's raining again today.