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Johannes A. Smit
Brutus all his life (cf. below).
Secondly, and impacting more directly on racism in sport, Brutus
relates how it happened that he connected his concerns with the Olympics.
One of my colleagues, Aldridge Adamson, had just come back from
Europe, where he had been working. He had been in London at the
time of the Empire and Olympic Games, the first Olympics after the
war. This was 1948, and the Helsinki Olympics of 1952 were approaching.
I was beginning to be aware of the whole race and sports
issue and its significance. Also on the same staff was another teacher
who was a Marxist, Harry Jeftha, who also was a strong influence on
me. He pointed out the fact that the Olympic charter makes it illegal
for any participating country to discriminate on the grounds of race.
I put the pieces together. The facts of apartheid in South
Africa were in contradiction with the Olympic governing rules. That
got me into the Olympic issue, for which many people know me
chiefly, having pretty much spearheaded the expulsion of South
Africa from the Olympic Games in 1970 (Brutus 2006a:38; e.a.).
As part of the international dynamics during the 1948 – 1952 period,
and developing the 1938 Charter, the ‘Fundamental Principles’ of the
Charter of the Olympic Games came into force. By 1949, the first statement
after the war, this basic assertion on ‘equal competition’ and ‘perfect
conditions’ is retained but a very significant element added – the one that
Brutus refers to in his ‘Memoir’ 14
:
14 The rules themselves have a history. In the 1933 Charter it reads: ‘The
moral virtue attached to sport had hitherto been neglected. The revivor of the
Olympic Games, as well as his first collaborators were convinced that this
power could be utilised if all sports were conducted on an equal footing and
under conditions as perfect as possible. They thought quite rightly that those
gatherings of young men were one of the best ways to make the different
classes in a country as well as the units of different civilizations well
acquainted with each other and to promote better understanding. Those who
followed did their utmost to improve that wonderful manifestation, which is
the sporting criterion of the races of the world, and contributed worthily to
bring together those who have taken part in the Games’.
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