Caster Semenya's humiliation continues

The news from Australian media reports  on Friday threatens to escalate the Caster Semenya gender debacle to a whole new level.

The reports claim that International Athletics Federation medical tests show that Semenya is a hermaphrodite and that she has internal testes.

If these reports are true we once again see evidence of the horrendous handling of this affair. We must also question the motives of those who have seen fit to leak this information.

Our only conclusion can be this is motivated by a cruel desire to publicly humiliate this young star.

This 18-year-old athlete was subject to the grossest invasion of her privacy in the days before she competed at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin, Germany, last month and in the weeks to follow. Read the rest of this entry »

Caster Semenya listens as Julius Malema mouths off against the media

I read with amazement the reports coming from JHB yesterday on the arrival back into town by golden girl Caster Semenya. There were Winnie Mandela, Julius Malema and others dishing out the insults left, right and centre. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.

After all, where in the world would a politician not leap at the chance to stick their nose into a trough full of limelight? But what got me annoyed were the sweeping statements that somehow the South African media were to blame for Semenya’s ordeal.

We are apparently everything from white-owned (a sin greater than incest it would seem), to racist to unpatriotic to, well, simply wanting to sell newspapers, heaven forbid!

Winnie even threatened to take my freedom away in revenge.  (My colleague at the Times, Ray Hartley has nicely dealt with that one so I won’t go down that road) Read the rest of this entry »

Caster Semenya after cleaning the clocks of the competition in the 800m final at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin on Wednesday night. Picture AP

If a young black African woman comes from nowhere and cleans the clocks of international competitors then something has to be wrong, right?
Logic tells us it is not possible for an 18-year-old University of Pretoria student and who grew up in rural Limpopo to beat the best the world has to offer after bursting onto the world stage only a year ago.
The fix must be in. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. She must be a man. Titter, titter.
This, at least, is the tone of the criticism targeted at the young South African athlete Caster Semenya by her skeptics. Her detractors will now subject her to the indignity of a “gender test” robbing her of the most important day in her life when she humbled the field in the 800m at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin on Wednesday night.
It is hard not to see racist and chauvinistic prejudice bubbling beneath this controversy so eagerly seized upon by Western media and the public. Read the rest of this entry »