South African High Commissioner in Kabul? The country's first cosmonaut (on a one-way trip)? Internal maintenance assistant at the shark tank at the aquarium in Cape Town? There are assorted possibilities, all of which have great appeal: whatever we do settle on, the one thing we certainly don't need is Leonard Chuene staying on as the head of Athletics South Africa, an institution he has dragged into the gutter with breathtaking success.

The sports administrator, by and large, is an unlovable beast, and a simple tenet holds true in most cases: anyone who wants to be a sports administrator generally, by definition, shouldn't be one. South African sport tends to succeed despite, rather than because of the administrators running assorted codes, and we've had some nightmare characters involved in the past (see South African rugby’s past decade for a slew of appropriate examples). But even by the consistently low standards of local sport, Chuene has proved particularly insidious.

As most of yesterday's newspapers illustrated at some length, the head of Athletics South Africa is a fundamentally dishonest man, and attempting to write off his creative employment of the truth as being all for the welfare of Caster Semenya — the poor athlete who's the real victim of Athletics South Africa's deplorable handing of a situation that was always primed for sensationalism — is both embarrassing, and a further measure of the man.

As a result, Chuene shouldn't be anywhere near the job he's brazenly hanging onto, in keeping with a country where accountability is such a foreign concept to people in power. But even if he is shipped off to Afghanistan or sent off on the next Mars exploration voyage, the damage to Semenya has been done, and a situation created where a 18-year-old athlete sits in a high-profile netherworld, both gender and future equally uncertain.

If, as the weight of speculation would seem to suggest, Semenya doesn’t conform entirely to sport's definition of female, what does she do? Compete with men? Run in a new category, one that’s hardly going to be awash with competition? Have medical work or gene therapy to allow her to race against women? There's no simple solution, and the stigma that surrounds Semenya will remain whatever she does from here.

The issues haven't changed because of the handling of the affair, but had the tests been appraised and questions answered properly, then having the whole sordid episode spill out on the world stage could have been avoided; instead, Chuene led the cacophony of sanctimony directed at the IAAF, when he'd known all along that there was an issue at hand. The IAAF hardly covered themselves in glory, but it's Chuene’s behaviour that has been most appalling.

Throw in the grandstanding politicos who leapt, as usual, at the chance to milk the publicity, and you have a dark and shameful chapter in the history of South African sport, and a woman — for that is what Semenya considers herself to be, whatever medical evidence may technically suggest — who has been an unwitting pawn in a series of ugly power plays. Firing Chuene is too late to change what’s happened, but it would at least make for a rare and welcome example of culpability in South African sport.

Contact Dan at dan@metropolis.co.za

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