[quote]grettiron wrote:
I can’t shut up and let a bad analogy get in the way of one of the most severe problems with IPF (as you can see, my problem with them is political and this is nothing against IPF lifters. Although support for IPF is support for this kind of behavior.):
[quote]rawunitymeet wrote:
In 2001, WPC Worlds was held in Cape Town, South Africa, a five-day event with hundreds of lifters. The WPC affiliate in South Africa had approximately 800 members across the country’s nine provinces. The week before the meet, WPC-South Africa officials were summoned to a meeting with South Africa’s Minister of Sport, Ngconde Balfour. A participant in that meeting recalls:
We had no idea as to what was to be discussed, as we were not given the courtesy of an agenda. When we arrived at the Department of Sport’s conference room, there were representatives from Home Affairs, Internal Affairs, Police, Drug Squad, and a few others from the powers that be that I did not know. In the center of this gathering was Alan Ferguson, the IPF representative for South Africa.
Balfour stated that Ferguson had informed him about the WPC championships and gave the following ultimatum:
The minister threatened to surround the hotel with the army and stop the event if we did not agree to test. We had no option but to agree. We had to supply at our cost a room at the hotel for the drug testing crew.
Despite the WPC subsidizing the government to impose drug testing, in 2002 the government made the IPF affiliate the only authorized powerlifting organization in South Africa, shutting down the WPC affiliate and barring entry of other federations. (So much for the South African Bill of Rights’ affirmation that “Everyone has the right to freedom of association.”) Along these lines, the IPF affiliate’s constitution states under its intents and purposes:
To proclaim as unauthorised all Powerlifting Meetings and Competitions throughout South Africa, which are not held under the Rules and Regulations of the FEDERATION, whether such contemplated, controlled or held by any club or association.
(http://www.powerliftingsa.co.za/sites/default/files/constitution_0.pdf)
Alan Ferguson, now a member of the IPF’s Executive Committee, claims that the government contacted him about the WPC championships and gave him the power to allow or forbid the competition. Ferguson states that he decided to allow the competition on the condition of drug testing: “The competition duly took place and the South African Drug Testing officials arrived to do the testing and although I was not present I was informed that they were chased out of the building.”
Participants at the meet recall events differently. “Alan Ferguson was indeed there,” states Nance Avigliano, who competed on the American team. Another member of the American team remarks concerning who was chased out when the drug testers arrived:
It was the lifters who ran out of the building in an attempt to avoid the testing group since the WPC is not a tested organization. When word was received that the Testing Officials were on site, there wasan emergency exit in the back of the warm-up room that had an exit to the outside. That was the route the lifters used to evacuate the facility. It looked like a circus with the lifters running around the Holiday Inn and the testing officials chasing after them. Moreover, Ferguson describes the aftermath of the competition in disingenuous terms: “After this competition the SAPA [the WPC affiliate] closed down and finally complete unity took place which is the current situation in the country.” The SAPA did not close down; the government closed it down.
As for “unity,” this suggests choice and persuasion, such as lifters from several federations choosing to compete at the Raw Unity Meet after feeling persuaded of the competition’s quality. By contrast, powerlifting in South Africa is in a state of IPF monopoly where persuasion and choice do not exist. [/quote][/quote]
So this is mostly seems like a first hand account of the “victim,” ie the WPC. That almost initially discredits this report, but I digress.
This report openly says that the IPF member, Ferguson, was approached by the South African government to begin with. Meaning the South African government had a potential problem with the WPC operating (in some way, shape, or form). When approached, is it at all surprising that a company (let’s be real here, everyone wants to make money) would choose to not have its competitor operate? Clearly they would choose to have them shut down. However, that is not even what the IPF suggested. The IPF suggested that they continue, as long as testing as done. An action that provides validity to the sport (this assumes that testing lends legitimacy to a sport, which the general public would certainly agree with).
Secondly, let’s assume that the government didn’t first approach the IPF for their opinion. Let’s assume that is false and that the IPF approached the government. If the ideals of the government were not in line with the ideals of the IPF, do you really think a small powerlifting organization (small compared to organizations with real power) would be able to sway a government into military action? Excuse me? This sounds completely ridiculous.
Or who knows, maybe the IPF bullied the government of one of the largest countries in the world into using military power to suppress a rival. Maybe that actually did happen. Either way, this thread is stupid.
