Earlier this month, the Comrades Marathon Association (CMA) declared that it was ending its affiliation with governing bodies KwaZulu-Natal Athletics (KZNA) and Athletics South Africa (ASA). The decision bodes well for the future of this much-loved road-running event. More organisations in South Africa should follow CMA’s approach and go it alone.

No other country is as obsessed with an ultra-marathon as South Africa is with the Comrades Marathon. It is an unusual event. Most ultras are run on trails, while Comrades is a day-long slog over more than 85 kilometres of tarmac between Durban and Pietermaritzburg.

Next year, the Comrades Marathon will host its centenary event. It will be a fitting milestone for an iconic South African race. But it is the governance of the event itself which has garnered the most attention recently.

Falling Out

Until 2025, CMA was a special member of KZNA, which permitted CMA to organise the Comrades Marathon as a non-profit organisation. However, in November 2025, the CMA withdrew its special membership from KZNA and sought direct affiliation with ASA, the national body.

Subsequently, CMA attempted to finalise the race dates for the 2027 and 2028 events with ASA. After CMA publicly announced that the centenary event will be held on 13 June 2027, KZNA objected and filed a cease-and-desist order through its lawyers.

Simultaneously, KZNA claimed that CMA owed it over R4 million in revenue from the 2026 event, which CMA disputed since it was no longer a KZNA affiliate. The impasse was one of the reasons why KZNA refused to sanction the 2027 race date.

Daily Maverick reports that following a meeting between the CMA, KZNA, and ASA on 10 July, ASA announced that the previously approved race dates were “null and void”. Then, on 17 July, ASA wrote a letter to CMA refusing its request for direct affiliation, stating that it must affiliate through the provincial federation instead.

So, on 1 August, more than a thousand CMA members voted on two resolutions at a special general meeting to determine the future of its relationship with ASA and KZNA. An overwhelming majority voted for a “CMA-first approach” over an “accommodative approach” with the two governing bodies. CMA members also voted against reaffiliation with KZNA.

There is a proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

When it comes to the Comrades Marathon, it turns out that “going together” was holding the race back and that “going alone” was a more viable option.

South African Pride

This year, I ran my first Comrades Marathon (I wrote about my experience in an earlier column). Despite being an ardent individualist, I couldn’t help but feel sentimentally South African while standing at the starting line in front of the Durban City Hall in the pre-dawn darkness.

I joined the chorus of thousands of runners who sang the national anthem and Shosholoza. I felt the shivers of excitement hearing Chariots of Fire and the famous cockerel crow before the firing of the starting gun.

The start of the Comrades Marathon (David Ansara, 14 June 2026)

Comrades is one of the few quintessentially South African institutions. Spending the day watching the race on television is an annual tradition in many households across the country. As a runner, you share the road with people from every race, gender, religion, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background.

Despite our many differences, sport is one of the domains which seems to bring South Africans together.

Nelson Mandela understood this when he stood next to Francois Pienaar as he lifted the William Webb Ellis trophy in 1995. Bafana Bafana captured some of that same positive energy at the FIFA World Cup in June of this year.

However, just because we take pride in the sporting accomplishments of our fellow South Africans doesn’t mean that we should cede control to politicians or other groups who claim to represent the “public interest”. We, the public, can represent our own interests.

Springbok Rugby is an institution with its own traditions and a distinct identity, just like the British and Irish Lions is an institution stretching back at least to 1891 (despite centuries of animosity between its constituent countries).

When Ireland plays rugby, it fields players from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. This practice was established in 1879 and persisted despite the political partition of Ireland in 1921. For other sporting codes, such as football, the two Irelands compete separately.

Sports needn’t be bound by the strictures of the bureaucratic state. The West Indies cricket team represents a group of independent islands in the Caribbean (as well as Guyana on the South American mainland). The likes of Liverpool and Arsenal football clubs draw on a global talent pool of players and have a greater following than many national teams.

The Right to Exit

Sport is organised by people, and people are prone to conflict. Where there is money, power, and prestige, you will invariably find the insidious creep of politics – and there is plenty of that in the world of sport.

In South Africa, sports administration is subject to various degrees of political meddling, the worst of which is the imposition of race quotas. Imagine training your whole life for a sport you love only to be told that you didn’t make the team because you have the wrong skin colour?

It’s no wonder that we now see Afrikaans surnames appearing in the starting line-ups of the Scottish, French, and Irish rugby teams. Ditto for cricket. In response to institutional discrimination, these players have assessed their options and chosen to ply their trade in more accommodating jurisdictions. I don’t blame them.

But it’s not only in the world of sport where we see South Africans exercising their right to exit.

This week, we witnessed the unedifying spectacle of Naledi Pandor attacking Akademia, an independent Afrikaans-medium university founded by the Solidarity Movement. Akademia is using private funds to build a massive campus in Pretoria East estimated to cost up to R3.2 billion.

Somehow this is unacceptable to Pandor, a former minister of education, who during a podcast interview called for the government to use its regulatory power to shut Akademia down.

In response to Pandor’s diatribe, Solidarity Movement chairperson Flip Buys noted cooly: “They're looking for a lightning rod for their own failures. So, we won't pay any attention to her. We're going full steam ahead.”

Buys has the right attitude.

Secession

If you’re looking to rage-bait your dinner party guests, try arguing for Cape Independence (or KwaZulu-Natal independence, for that matter).

Although many patriotic South Africans might baulk at the prospect, secession is an entirely legitimate form of political action. If a system is so broken and those in charge threaten your vital interests, you have a right – and perhaps even a duty – to strike out on your own.

That is what the founding fathers did in the United States 250 years ago when they signed the Declaration of Independence. It is what the now-prosperous Croatia and Slovenia did when those countries left the former Yugoslavia in 1991. A couple of years after that, in 1993, the Czech Republic and Slovakia agreed to an amicable split, and nobody batted an eyelid.

There are many degrees between the highly centralised status quo and full-blown secession, including federalism and other forms of devolved authority. The challenge is to find opportunities, as Solidarity has done, to carve out domains of independence from the state and to be willing to hold your ground when the dominant political elite turns on you.

Despite having many gifted people, an abundance of natural resources and world-class companies, many of South Africa’s public institutions are failing due to its terrible politics.

That is why those who care about building a future for themselves and their families in South Africa should do what the organisers of the Comrades Marathon did and ditch the authorities that are no longer working for them.

Ansara is CEO of the Free Market Foundation.