You just have to admire those societies who have the freedom
to embrace and flaunt skin-deep beauty. This occurred to me when I was watching the latest
edition of the Tour De France from the comfort of my couch. Apart from the
many beautiful bicycles and superhuman cyclists on display, I was never unhappy
to see the glitzy podium ceremonies at the end of each stage. Tall, elegant
models would grace the stage with their matching dresses as they towered over the diminutive cyclists. And they are only on that stage because of their undeniable good looks. And I think that's great.
I would imagine it is quite an honour for a young women to be selected as a Tour Podium model. It would probably be quite an accolade for an attractive lady to be recognised as beautiful enough to stand on the stage in front of a global audience.
So where am I headed with this? Well, I couldn't help but think of how a country as overly politically correct as ours would react to the idea of putting people on stage purely for their good looks.
Lets just pretend for a moment that South Africa was awarded the rights to host a world class multi-day road race. We know that we'd have a few decent cyclists in the mix; we'd pride ourselves on being able to host the world class event; and we have a habit of committing huge sums of cash into projects that have a short lifespan (stadiums, for example), or funding projects that have no lifespan at all (think e-tolling saga!).
Assuming that the lotto and the Department of Religion, Arts, Culture, Indigenous affairs, Sports, and Tourism aka R.A.C.I.S.T. [we could have that portfolio like that one day... don't laugh!] decide to grant the Tour a couple of million ZAR to pull it off, I predict that the governance structure responsible for a Tour of South Africa (for want of a better name...) would obviously have a government representative on the planning committee. In all likelihood the said government official would probably never even have turned the pedal of a bicycle in her life... although having driven the topless tour bus over Chapman's Peak is close enough to doing the Argus in certain government circles.
But that's not the issue. I want to be a fly on the wall when the agenda item for the planning committee settles on "Podium Arrangements". This is where it would get interesting - because on the one hand we'd have the organised cyclist cum event coordinator relaying his vision of a podium with an African theme: some cheetahs, a rhino, a
boerie roll stand, and some hot babes gracing the podium in their leopardskin bikinis. Now perhaps that's not the classiest theme, I'll admit, but here is where the government official will exercise her veto rights (granted to her based on the budget allocated to the Tour of South Africa - with its massive "Transformational Agenda").
"Eisch", she would start, "we need to show the world that we are not Euro-centric. We don't need to copy that French bicycle what-what- haaibo - we are proudly African and represent the whole continent"...from here there would probably be 11 minutes of political grandstanding with phrases such as "sustainable development", "grassroutes cycling", "community commitment", "enabling the youth", "unlocking socio-economic barriers", "united vision of transformed cycling"...all the political jargon would spew forth. Eventually we would get to the topic of the babes in their bikinis. It is here that the women's rights agenda would hit the big ring and our government official would speak of "equality", "emancipation", "sexist portrayal of women", "enforcing patriarchal societies", and "Castor Semenya". Bottom line would be: lose the bikini babes or forget the cash. Also, put in some disabled people who would never get the chance to do this - then you get to keep the cash - and make sure there is sufficient government representation on the podium as well.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you what the stage 1 winners podium would look like if hosted in South Africa:
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| Please note the mandatory rural disabled women; Castor Semenya; Jacob Zuma; and check the list of race sponsors on the stage. |
