Stofile told a media briefing in parliament on Wednesday that an end was in sight to the transformation of formerly all-white South African teams into ones that represented the demographics of the country, where the black majority voted in all-race elections for the first time in 1994.

"It is going to take us some time but we should not be talking about transformation in 2010," said Stofile.

"We don't want permanent transformation in this country. We want it to come to an end, and if we do it right we should be there in five or six years."

In their quest to redress the imbalance of decades of racial discrimination, South Africa's government and sporting authorities have tried with mixed success to impose quotas of non-white players at local, provincial and national level.

Quotas have sparked a series of political rows, the latest involving Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was branded "treasonous" by the head of parliament's sports committee for saying current transformation efforts smacked of "tokenism" and were "an insult to all those involved".

South Africa has struggled to raise top-level black participation in traditionally white-dominated cricket and rugby while soccer is overwhelmingly seen as a black sport.

"NO QUOTAS"

Although Stofile said there were no official quotas in place, neither rugby nor cricket have fielded an all white team at national level since 1999, and provincial rugby and cricket teams regularly include a handful of black players and the United Cricket Board's constitution bars all-white teams.

Stofile said the government would not impose quotas for black representation on teams but would liaise more closely with federations to speed up transformation in other ways.

"Quotas have not worked in this country," he said. "We are not going to go back there. We are saying that we should be concentrating on the development of players and giving them access to facilities.

"If you saw the French (rugby) team that played Wales at the weekend, it was more cosmopolitan than ours, and that's a scandal," he said.

"We all want a non-racial South Africa, but how do we get there? Some say leave it to chance and the players will come through, but we have seen we can't do that...If you delay transformation, it is like delaying justice."

Stofile said black talent had to be given the opportunities and support that had been given to white sportsmen and women.

"The legacy of apartheid and colonialism left our country with a skewed allocation of resources, with better facilities and opportunities for certain groups and a complete lack of these for others...We have an obligation to correct that through accelerated transformation and development in sport."

He appeared to accept that the process might have a negative effect on the results of national teams.

"South Africa winning is short-term, being a united country is long term," he said.