“I would have thought the one set of sportspeople in the world who should have been taking the knee was in South Africa.” – Peter Hain
TELFORD VICE | Cape Town
THE refusal by South Africa’s men’s cricket team to take a knee in support of racial justice has been slammed by noted anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain. Teams from several other countries have offered the gesture in recent months, as have figures in a range of different sports. But not the XI representing the country where the legacy of apartheid continues to determine the course of millions of lives based on their race.
During the T20I series against England, banners at Newlands proclaimed: “We stand in solidarity against racism and gender based violence. CSA stands for equality.” The players themselves have done nothing beyond release a powerful statement outlining their commitment to anti-racism.
Asked on Wednesday if he was disappointed by the team’s lack of action, Hain said: “Yes, I am, to be frank. Because I would have thought, of all countries in the world, given the history of apartheid and the legacy of apartheid that still is with us [they would take a knee].
“Siya Kolisi only became the Springbok captain [who led his team to triumph at the 2019 men’s World Cup] because he went to Grey [High School]. He was plucked out of the township and poverty where he wasn’t getting a decent meal a day to become one of the best internationals in the world.
“So the legacy is still there, and I would have thought the one set of sportspeople in the world who should have been taking the knee was in South Africa; to send a signal to the world that South Africa actually understood its apartheid history.
“What’s struck me about the contemporary debate, especially around cricket, is that attitudes among some of the white cricketers haven’t changed. Viewed from outside, it’s as if people simply haven’t imbibed the nature of change.”
Nairobi-born Hain was raised in South Africa until, in 1966 when he was 16, his parents moved the family to the United Kingdom to escape harassment and persecution from the apartheid state for their activism against the regime. There he led protests against tours by South Africa’s all-white teams, and later became a Labour member of parliament and a cabinet minister.
He was speaking at a webinar to promote a new book, “Pitch Battle: Sport, Racism and Resistance”, which he has co-authored with André Odendaal, a cricket historian and administrator. The work’s publication next Tuesday might seem timed to coincide with the rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM), which has gained prominence in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis on May 25 this year.
Odendaal said it was the other way around: “We were trying to explain how systemic racism developed in sport, and BLM broke out as we were writing the concluding pages. Together with the pandemic, that delayed our book by six months. But it enabled us to end it in a very relevant way.
“This is a time when we must rethink; rethink how the world works after Covid-19 and also rethink how sport works and the tremendous shortcomings there have been in the decolonisation project. We’re talking about 500 years of systemic violence with these ideas of discrimination and exclusion that have developed in our country particularly in the last 200 years since sport took on its modern form. It’s a good time, in new languages and new contexts, with young people asking questions, to revisit where we are and what we can learn from the struggles that went before.”
Odendaal is part of CSA’s interim board, which has been compiled with the help of government.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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