South Africans of all races today cheered their return to the Olympics after three decades, but the government criticized plans for the team not to carry the South African flag.
Newspapers carried banner headlines today announcing South Africa's return to the Olympics. Radio and TV breakfast shows were devoted to speculation on how South African athletes would do in the 1992 Barcelona Games.The National Olympic Committee announced Wednesday night that South Africa would take part in the Games with its first racially integrated squad after years of isolation because of apartheid.
"We are now going with a non-racial team," said NOC chairman Sam Ramsamy.
But Education Minister Louis Pienaar criticized the NOC's plan for the South African team to march behind a new flag at Barcelona and to replace the South African national anthem.
"The team should march behind the South African flag," he said in a radio interview.
Many anti-apartheid groups feel the official flag and anthem symbolize white domination and are unacceptable.
"We need a symbol of national unity," Ramsamy said.
The Olympic Committee unveiled a substitute flag, a white banner with diagonal streaks of red, green and blue, bordered by gray. The Olympic symbol, the five interlocking rings, is in the upper left and the words "South Africa" are in gray at the bottom.
Ramsamy said the South African squad would march under the Olympic anthem - Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" - rather than the South African national anthem.
South Africa's last Olympic appearance was at the 1960 Summer Games in Rome, when the team was all-white because of the government's apartheid policies.
Next year's team is certain to feature black distance runners and boxers, and blacks may represent other sports as well.
"This is the first time we can say that South Africa is taking part in the Olympic Games," Ramsamy told a news conference at a Johannesburg hotel. "For the first time we can get a team . . . that will have the support of all of South Africa."
Despite its long absence from international competition, South Africa could field medal contenders in track and field, boxing, yachting and several other sports.
Ramsamy for years led the international sports boycott against South Africa to protest apartheid. But he said he supported a return to the Olympics following President F.W. de Klerk's reforms and his pledge to end racial discrimination.