EDITORIAL | In wake of Tatjana’s glory Gayton should tweet less, figure out how to build pools more

Tatjana Smith's Paris Olympics gold on Monday night was another reminder of how swimming so regularly comes through for South Africa’s medals tally at major sporting events.

Swimming’s Olympics medals tally is enviable — with 21 (eight golds), it has provided the second-most after athletics with 28 (nine golds) with boxing third on 19 (six golds) and tennis a distant fourth with six (three golds).

Since readmission swimming has produced a gold medal winner at almost every Olympics. Penny Heyns won two in 1996 (South Africa also had a silver and a bronze), in 2000 the country had two bronzes and a silver and in 2004 the relay team won the 4x400m freestyle.

There were no swimming medals in 2008. In 2012 Cameron van der Burgh and Chad le Clos won gold (South Africa had another silver), in 2016 there were three silvers, and in 2020 Tatjana Schoenmaker, as she was then, won gold (South Africa had another silver).

In 2024 Smith is a favourite to add another medal, perhaps a third gold for her trophy cabinet at home, as she defends her 200m breaststroke crown she won in Tokyo 2020 on Wednesday and Thursday. Pieter Coetze placed fifth in the men’s 100m backstroke and his chances are promising for a medal in the 200m.

Every time a Heyns, Le Clos or Schoenmaker/Smith thrills us in an Olympic or World Championships pool, South Africans swell with pride.

These athletes take part in a sport that despite the prestige it brings South Africa, does not yield a large income in this country like the big three — rugby, cricket and football — do. They make huge sacrifices — physical and personal — to reach an Olympics, let alone become the best in the world to win there.

And in doing so they become heroes to South Africans — and to the country's young children who dream of growing up and emulating them.

So even with Smith’s glory, there is a tinge of regret and sadness that not all South African children have the opportunity to spend time in a swimming pool trying to learn to emulate their heroes and heroines.

Swimming South Africa — also not part of the big three South African sports club — is a cash-strapped organisation. It cannot build pools around the country in poor areas or at previously disadvantaged schools. 

It seemed another regretful matter that sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie, having just returned from Paris, published a post on X that many found xenophobic. McKenzie was weighing in on the issue surrounding the eligibility of Miss South Africa contestant Chidimma Vanessa Adetshina, born to a Nigerian father and a mother of Mozambican descent, to compete for the title.

Patriotic Alliance leader McKenzie’s populist leanings have been a concern since his appointment in the government of national unity. There are questions over the credentials he brings to a portfolio of sports and arts.

The government, like Swimming SA, does not necessarily have endless financial resources to build swimming pools, let alone all the many sporting facilities that could change lives in poor and previously disadvantaged areas.

The disadvantages that have been left by the country’s tragic history and injustices of the past continue to plague the majority of its population.

McKenzie, like previous sports ministers, seems sure to be at OR Tambo International Airport to greet Smith and South Africa’s other medal-winners so far — the Blitzboks and mountain-biker Alan Hatherly, both with bronze — when they return. The minister may present financial gifts to the winning athletes.

One wonders if any sports minister has ever asked an athlete where they would rather have the money go, to the competitor’s bank account or building facilities for those who don’t have them?

If the government does not have money to build pools — and it has, though corruption and service delivery have stood in the way — then one hopes McKenzie realises his job is to find the people who do, set up meetings with them and get them to part with their money. The situation that is a legacy of apartheid has not been addressed enough.

And not just pools, but fields, tracks, rings, gyms and academies.

None of that though must detract or distract from Smith, Hatherly, the Blitzboks and all the other athletes who have worked and sacrificed like Trojans to just be at an Olympics, and who should yet bring home a few more medals.