Hon Speaker, the ACDP is delighted at the support that our hero and 800 metre world champion, Mokgadi Caster Semenya, has received from her countrymen and women. The report that more than 35 000 people have joined a Facebook group in support of Caster Semenya and African women bears testimony to the overwhelming support that Caster has received.
We honour her for her courage and determination and for rising above the abuse and unfair treatment she has received from the International Association of Athletics Federations and some media reports, emanating mainly from the Australian and English media, implying that she was cheating.
The ACDP believes that if anybody, including athletes, has a birth defect, then they should be protected and supported by all, rather than being subjected to humiliating gender tests which may leave a person emotionally scarred for life.
There is an argument that there is no single process of determining gender because every case is different. It has been reported that at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, eight female athletes were determined to have male chromosomes and were barred from the games.
Further tests, however, showed that they were physiologically female, even though their genes indicated that they were male, and they were reinstated. One shudders to think about the trauma these athletes experienced.
The ACDP therefore calls on our government, Athletics SA and other sporting bodies to do their best to pre-empt and prevent a repetition of this humiliating and degrading testing of our athletes. Thank you.