How you play the game: The contribution of sport to the protection of human rights
Speech by Dr Bill Jonas, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner at the Sport and Human Rights Conference, Sydney, 1 September 1999
Sir William Deane, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
I would like to acknowledge the Darawal people, the traditional owners and custodians of the land where we meet today and thank you for you very war welcome.
The question whether sport and politics do or do not mix is notorious. I am certain, in fact, that many sports fans would object most strongly to this very conference, for over the next three days we will undoubtedly invoke all manner of dark political demons to sully sport's purity. The fans have good cause for concern: the utopia of sport is besieged on all sides: athletes use illicit drugs to gain unfair advantage, Olympic organising committees engage in corrupt practices to the same purpose, and in some cases - South Africa's Springboks during the era of apartheid comes to mind - sport colludes with some of the worst excesses of racial discrimination the world has ever known. So what are the fans hoping to protect?
There is, I believe, some quality in sport which resists appropriation by politically, economically and socially powerful interests. However much we become accustomed to seeing corporate sponsors professing ownership of football leagues, or to sports stars endorsing a new detergent, or to politicians currying public favour by befriending sporting legends, we still believe that somewhere, somehow, there remains something inviolate about the sporting phenomenon.
Before I attempt to briefly elucidate what this might be, I want to say how honoured and pleased I am to have been invited to speak at this opening ceremony and to wish you all the best in your deliberation. As a former athlete I am extremely interested in the topic although in practice these days I am more involved in human rights than in sport itself.
In brief answer to the criticism I framed at the start, that politics contaminates sport, I want to draw attention to the conference's title, which heralds the other side of the equation, namely that sport has a 'contribution' to make to society. The next three days offers opportunities to consider how sport can 'decontaminate' politics, how it can help correct our social and political inequalities.
Sport's capacity to defy prejudice and discrimination is epitomised by the triumph of black American athlete Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. In a succession of extraordinary athletic feats, each lasting only seconds or minutes, he won four gold medals and defeated Nazism's laboured claims to Aryan supremacy. Hitler, speechless - for once - in the face of the indisputable left the stadium.
It would be foolish to try to equate racial discrimination in Australia with that of Nazi Germany, but it would not be foolish to draw some comparisons. After all, the 'stolen generation' of Aboriginal children removed from their families and resettled in white homes and institutions, represents at best a systematic government experiment in racial control. And still, racial discrimination in this country remains socially and politically endemic, with Indigenous peoples in particular struggling in many walks of life to reach even average levels of achievement.
Except sometimes in sport. Somehow we manage to elevate the likes of tennis great Evonne Goolagong-Cawley, boxer Lionel Rose, and champion runner Cathy Freeman, to the status of national heroes. Who could forget Cathy Freeman's victory lap at the 1994 Commonwealth Games as she faced crowd and cameras resplendent in the red, yellow and black pride of the Aboriginal flag? Could we not perhaps see in this a hint of the ghost of Jesse Owens?
The struggle for racial equality seems never-ending. Yet, in what can only be construed as some kind of parallel universe, as if our right hands don't know what our left are doing, we manage to cheer, celebrate and revere our Indigenous sporting heroes even as racist political parties find popular support and Reconciliation's progress, at times, seems frustratingly slow.
In Australia, as in many other countries, we confer special status upon the institution of sport and, by association, upon its protagonists. In the comparative utopia of track and field and pool and court, Indigenous people do enjoy a freedom from discrimination, an opportunity to succeed, and a degree of government support and public acclaim often denied them elsewhere.
At times the sport's star's halo does offer some immunity from discrimination in other areas of life. Its benefits, if you like, are transferable. I have been a beneficiary, indirectly, of this phenomenon myself. My grandfather, Billy Jonas, was one of Australia's best-known Aboriginal horsemen and he was taken to ride in England at the coronation of King George V. I believe it was his reputation as a horseman that helped save our family from being rounded up, herded onto a mission, and deprived of the opportunities we have enjoyed.
There are many stories with less happy conclusions. You might recall that Muhammad Ali's gold medal, which he won at Rome in 1960, ended its days at the bottom of the Ohio River. Shortly after returning to the States he was refused service in a whites-only restaurant-told, "We don't serve no niggers" - was subsequently followed and attacked by members of a white motorcycle gang, and threw the medal away in disgust at the hypocrisy.
What is sacrosanct about sport does not always transfer across, but it is incumbent upon us to make it happen. We need to ask ourselves, first, what exactly is it about sport that we would wish to transfer to social and civil life? I want briefly to suggest two reasons why sport presents us with an excellent model that we would do well to reproduce in the broader sphere.
Firstly, sport is an arena where competition is governed by the rule of law. The laws are in general respected, and they are enforceable. It is a model not unlike that which human rights defenders and international human rights lawyers dream of.
Secondly, let me draw attention to the geometrical configuration of the Olympic symbol. Five circles of equal size yet of different colour; circles that overlap yet remain distinct. A fitting symbol of equality and difference. In sport, competitors start out at the same point - they are given equal opportunity.
At the same time the whole point of the competition is differentiation - to find a winner. Sport provides an ideal model of difference in performance, and equality in opportunity.
Significantly, the winner always begins the next race at the same point as everyone else: there are no carried over, or hereditary, rights. We even find, in the handicap system used in golf, a sporting precedent for positive discrimination.
I won't exhaust the analogies. The conference papers will no doubt find other and better points of comparison between sports and human rights.
I will end with reference to the saying from which the conference gets its title: "It's not whether you win or lose but how you play the game". Without for a moment detracting from the ethical force of this statement, I want to suggest nevertheless that it is the outstanding victories of men and women in sport which demonstrate to us, through undeniable and indisputable action, the defiance of discrimination, the struggle against adversity, and the untruths of prejudice, that are the hallmarks of our own efforts in the name of genuinely universal human rights.
Have a great conference.
Last updated 1 December 2001
