EFF STATEMENT ON DISCRIMINATORY EXCLUSION OF CASTER SEMENYA

Wednesday. 09 September 2020

The Economic Freedom Fighters is saddened by the patently racist and anti-African decision to exclude Caster Semenya from participating in athletics. effectively stopping her from defending her 800m title. The ruling by the Swiss Supreme Court which seeks to compel Semenya to take hormone suppressing drugs is a shifting of the goal-posts for a talented young woman who the world stage simply cannot accept is the best in the world.

Semenya is a victim of her own talent. She is being victimized and discriminated against because her white-peers in the athletics arena cannot accept that she is talented beyond measure. Semenya has been undisputedly the greatest female long-distance athlete in the modern era and has maintained this greatness despite constant questioning of her gender and identity. Those who have been unable to compete with her on the track have now resolved to change the rules and compel her to take drugs she simply does not want to take.

It is disturbing that any ethical body can resolve to exclude an individual from participating in a sport on the basis that they refuse to take drugs that will alter their biological make-up. It reveals to us that there is a tight grip on international sports by vested interests in the pharmaceutical and business industry.

We send our strength to Caster Semenya. a world champion during this time. We reaffirm

our belief in her as an elite athlete who has fallen victim to an anti-black world that refuses to accept that a black woman can dominate a sport regulated by a white world.

Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, 9 September 2020