Paul Dobson tries to make sense of government's obsession with interfering in succesful sporting codes and ignoring those who fail dismally.

What is it with these people? Are they sadists? Are they iconoclasts? Does it give them some devilish sense of power to destroy what is good and strong? Do they delight in sticking spokes into wheels?

Rugby football is South Africa's most successful sport at international level. Cricket, too, is internationally competitive at the top level. But those two come in for governmental big sticks in a way that seems to pass soccer, hockey, netball, and athletics, all of which are not competitive at the top level and growing less so. So now we try to spite rugby and cricket, and again politicians want to pick sporting teams.

There are massive issues to engage politicians - poverty, joblessness, housing, lawlessness, corruption and greed even within their own ranks, the malfunctioning of departments and even provinces. Lots of things do not work. Rugby and cricket work, and because they work they get acclaim and publicity. But this then makes them an easy vehicle for bullying politicians to ride on in their quest for publicity and power.

Democracy is more than voting once in a while for a government. It is not a tool for dictators of any stature. It is about allowing people the freedom to do what is naturally lawful for them to do. It is lawful to play rugby, an international game which has its own laws and regulations which apply internationally to those who wish to play internationally. Normal governments let rugby football get on with its own lawful business. They allow their countries to choose their own teams in their own way, and many countries have had and have "foreign" nationals playing for them - England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Samoa, Canada and the USA amongst them.

Tendai Mtawarira is rugby player. He is one of the most recognisable rugby players in the world - a man at the top of his profession, a skilled man, an important man in the great success of the Springbok team in 2009. By all rugby laws and regulations he is entitled to play where he is playing and in the way that he is playing. The laws and regulations of rugby football say he is entitled to play for the Springboks and those in charge of South African rugby choose him to play for the Springboks because he plays so well.

That Mtawarira is a black rugby player is incidental to his ability and fame. He is a rugby player and the world judges him as a great rugby player and one of the most popular throughout the world.

That he is a black rugby player should be a boon to South Africa if it is serious about moving to a non-racial society for he is black but essentially a rugby player, his blackness of no consequence. But it seems there are a people with a vested interest in keeping racial distinctions alive. (The Latin word for distinction is discrimen - discrimination.)

That he is a black African - government-speak - should also be a boon for they have a role model, the black man whose success and ability make it clear that rugby is not an "elitist, white sport", as demagogues would have it, the black man encouraging people to play at a time when there are campaigns to get people to engage in the wholesomeness of sport.

Mtawarira is such a hard-working, good living man who earns an honest living and makes a positive contribution to the good of the country. He is not a gangster or a fraudster or a drug addict. He is not taking what is not his and he is not doing what is illegal. The same can not be said for many, many immigrants from many parts of the world or even for many who are citizens in South Africa.

Mtawarira has not just dropped out of the sky. He has come through years of development through good schooling. That is what needs to be attended to. It is silly to try to build a pyramid from the apex down.

Deport Mtawarira or stop him playing for South Africa and then put the next black African to play the role that he is playing in South Africa. Deport Mtawarira and condemn him to obscurity.

Oh, the whole business is sick. It sends a message to South Africans and the world that we are not mature enough to try to be normal, to try to do what other people do in the way that they do it. We are an abnormal, immature society who live in a playpen that politicians must supervise/police - politicians who have never been the role model that Mtawarira is, "sport politicians" who have never made the contribution to sport in South Africa that Mtawarira makes.

Beast Mtawarira is good for rugby football, good for sport in South Africa, good for South Africa.