Budd Is Gone, But Pieterse Lives -- When She Runs, She's Still Zola

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Zola Budd is gone, but Zola Pieterse is alive and well and running back to happiness in her beloved homeland, which optimists now call the ``new'' South Africa.

The new South Africa? We must wait and see. But about the new Zola there is no doubt.

The old one, a forlorn emblem of the acrimony which tore the sports world apart in the '80s, has been blown away by the gale-force wind of change now sweeping across the South African veldt.

Zola was back on her bare feet again recently, signaling her return to world-class athletics with a 3,000 meters victory in 8:42.26, the fastest time in the world this year and one which would have placed her third on the world list in 1990.

It was a performance which takes her back to the future she thought she never had. She has confirmed that not only does she want to run internationally and in the Olympics again, but that her dream is now to return to Britain and take part in the London Marathon once the ``normalization' of South African President F.W. de Klerk's brave new third world is complete.

However, her decision is bound to again embroil her in a political furor, with speculation as to whether the girl who once gained a British passport on the strength of her grandfather's parentage and a newspaper's patronage can compete for South Africa in the Olympics as she already has for Britain - albeit ignominiously - in 1984.

All things (and, more importantly, all people), being equal, South Africa seems destined to return, after 30 years in the wilderness, to the Olympic fold, if not in Barcelona next year, then certainly Atlanta in 1996.

Whether Zola can be part of a South African team is a matter for the International Olympic Committee's eligibility commission. The IOC says such a case would have to be ``treated on its merits.'' Britain, the country which briefly but painfully adopted her would have to give its blessing.

``At the moment I am not banking on anything beyond the South African championships in April,'' said Zola. ``But these are momentous times in South Africa and, with all that is happening, I hope it will be possible for me to run for my country internationally in future.''

When Zola came to Britain in 1984 she was an underdeveloped 17-year-old coping with the problems of puberty and buffeted by a largely hostile media. ``Trying to be British was a constant strain when all the time I was a young Afrikaner girl out of her depth.''

Now she is 24, happily married to a liquor store owner and living with her husband Mike, five dogs and two cats on a small holding five miles outside a city that represents the very heart of Afrikanerdom.

She hardly seems the same person who trod, and tripped, through the political minefield which followed her ``defection'' to Britain. Physically and emotionally Budd has blossomed. She is no longer a little girl lost, but a woman who has found contentment and confidence in marriage on her return to the land which spiritually she never left.

She has grown her hair long, strengthened her timid English and forsaken her studies of political science for a three-year computer programming course at her local technical college.

Left behind is the trauma of her father's murder by his homosexual lover and her vilification in Britain, chronicled self-pityingly in an autobiography in which she declared ``I will never again allow myself to be used and abused.''

She had also insisted that even if South Africa was readmitted to world athletics she would have no wish to run again internationally.

So why the change of heart?

``I think it is because I've never been happier in my life,'' she says. ``I always enjoyed my sport, despite the problems, but something was missing. Now I have found it in marriage. It is good to be back, but running is no longer an obsession with me. Never again will I allow it to take over my life.''

Zola says she has set herself no goals except the defense of her South African title. ``It will be a year before I am really back to my best. Obviously, if things work out, I'd now like the opportunity to try again for an Olympic medal, but my real ambition is to run in the London Marathon. Do you think they would make me welcome?''

Two-time world cross-country champion Zola remains the jewel in South Africa's sporting crown. Her time of 8:33.5 for the 3,000 meters, set in 1984, is still the national, African and world junior record.

Her acknowledgement that she will develop into a marathoner means South Africa should be able to call on two of the finest women in the world over the distance eventually.

South Africa has four women who have run under 23 seconds in the 200 meters. One, 19-year-old Marcell Winkler, a black, has done 11.6 for the 100 meters. Myrtle Bothmar is the world's second-fastest at 400-meters hurdles and last year Evette de Klerk was sixth at 100 and 200.

There are some outstanding men, too, notably black sprinters and marathoners from the mines, such as Tshakile Nzimande and David Tsebe, whose respective times put them in the world top ten. There is also an exciting white 400-meters hurdles prospect, Dries Vorster.

There is little doubt that athletics is the fulcrum of South Africa's return to the international arena.

Who knows? Maybe soon the field for international competitions will be thick with Afrikaaner accents, with athletes such as van der Merwe, Bothma, Vorster and de Klerk lining up without an anti-apartheid poster in sight.

Even a Mrs. Pieterse, perhaps, might be lining up - although, should it happen, she'd like it to be known that this is not a Budd by any other name.