The Economist has two articles (here and here) about our Rugby World Cup victory and racial quotas in sport. From the article:

• They think it “pragmatic” to have “brief periods of positive discrimination to jump-start any group that has been racially oppressed for generations and has been unable to achieve its potential.”
• “But once a big affirmative shove towards greater fairness has been engineered, it is dangerous to perpetuate a system of quotas, racial or otherwise, because it always risks undermining the principle of individual merit.”
• “Far better for the government to concentrate on investment, training and talent-spotting in poor black schools.”

As far as I am concerned, it is almost always best not to impose quotas on sports. Time and energy should instead be focussed on developing affirmative talent young so that real stars are developed.

I was recently on a street in Moshi, Tanzania when a street vendor told me that Lucky Dube had been murdered. I was amazed that Mr Dube had made such an impact all the way up in Tanzania. (I later found that Reggae is extremely popular in Tanzania)

The Economist has this obituary on Lucky Dube who was murdered during a hijacking recently. From the article:

• Lucky Dube was “the best-loved and biggest-selling reggae star in South Africa.”
• He “drifted into Rastafarianism out of schoolboy curiosity, believing only parts of it and smoking no ganja.”
• Dube eventually persuaded the SABC to air “the first anti-apartheid song to be played on a white station.”
• He took on drugs (“You go sniffling them glue/No good for you”); promiscuity and AIDS (“Don’t you think it’s time/to be a little more responsible”) and racial quotas (“We are tired of people who/think that affirmative action is the way out/and is another way of putting puppets/where they don’t belong.”)
• “He also sang against South Africa’s appalling crime wave” which eventually claimed his life